My race, my pace

In two months from today, there will be two new and incredible facts about my life, (God willing):

1. I will be 47 years old.
2. I will be somewhere in the middle of finishing my first marathon

Well, that is if I’m lucky. My life since December has been “scheduled.” I took a look at my eating and nutrition and scheduled my daily eating. “Oh, its 11am, I need to be eating fruit, oh it’s 4pm, I need my pre-work out snack.” I incorporated my training schedule and have a four day a week running program. I took a look at my sleeping patterns and am forcing myself to get to bed earlier (right up there with miracles). Everything is on a schedule.

My good friends are asking for lunches and dinners and I keep putting everyone off, (sorry Kristen, Ashley, Julie and Kate), I am saying no to Saturday invites to keep my days open (sorry Jen and Liz).

Saturday’s below to Central Park, me and my Saucony’s.

If I am not running, I am thinking about my next run and I have to say, I am not all that different from other runners that I meet and obsessively talk to about running.

I had the thought this week, what am I going to do after May 6th? What is my life going to look like if I am not training and running? I will cross and destroy that bridge when I get to it.

I am now running over 14 miles in my long runs. I am not really excited about long runs anymore -- AT ALL. Each one has been a challenge in itself for different reasons. Until this point, I haven’t experienced any of the muscle soreness that I did training for my two half marathons. I was running with some ease and that all changed once I started hitting the 13 mile mark.

This week, my feet hurt, my ankle hurts, my legs were like dead weights, I felt like I felt when I was finishing my half marathon, tired, spent, depleted, empty and sick to my stomach. After eating the third time on Saturday, I started to feel somewhat normal. Somewhat...

I whimper when I run, ask my brother Jymie, who saw me at mile 9 in Columbus, Ohio, my friend Matt who ran the last mile of my first 10 mile long run in Central Park last year or Chris who had to pull me the last three miles of 2012’s NYC half. I hit this wall and I start whimpering. I feel like I can’t take another step, but my runner’s instinct won’t let me stop until I finish. It comes out a whimper.

My friend Scott calls me a “warrior,” and I cringe every time he says it and think, “ah, no not me.” Well, last Saturday I was whimpering in my kitchen making my second meal, I was cutting spinach to put into my omelet, whimpering. I whimpered this morning making an appointment with my doctor to look at my ankle. I am not a warrior, I am not a machine and I am not fearless…

But I am also am no quitter…

Running and training has become a metaphor for my life. I compare work situations, commuting in the subways of Manhattan, people expressing their negative opinions of me (yes, this has happened three times in the last month – directly to my face), my relationships, serious life situations, it all comes back to the same theory of running. We have goals, we meet goals.

I had to do it; I had to look up the dictionary definition of warrior: One who is engaged aggressively or energetically in an activity, cause or conflict.

Of course, the definition indicates war activities, and I am not engaging in war, but I do have my own conflicts, I am warring against my negative thinking. Not letting my doubt and self pity get the best of me, this is a full on war at the present moment.

My friend Esat gave me my new direction on all my runs until May 6th:

1. Slow down to your marathon pace and run consistently at the slower pace

This idea reminds me of the conversation with my running coach Ryan during the training for my first half marathon. I was complaining about the young girls who get on the treadmill next to me and run at 7.0, 7.5 – and I’m stuck back at 6.0, sweating, pushing myself, bright red face. He pointed out that they get on run fast – then get off and leave. I am still on the treadmill running, I am still running 45 minutes later as they are leaving the gym. I need to run my race and run at my pace.

My race, my pace.

So if everything is a metaphor and my life and training are now one, although it doesn’t rhyme, it is my life, and I can approach that with whatever attitude I can muster. This means, with all the good sweet moments, the injuries, broken hearts, triumphs – it’s mine. To do with it what I will.

(This is just a side note for myself, to myself:

Dear Stephanie. I would like to remind you that although you are whimpering, and apparently it is not something you like about yourself, you are in the middle of training for a marathon and pushing your physical body to its capacity and beyond. Each time you whimper, you are in the middle of your runs, you and your Sacouny’s, out beating the pavement. Your living life…smack dab in the middle of the whimper.

Whimper away if you have to, whimper away).


So I will go to see Dr. Peterson, show him my injured ankle and I may even whimper. But since I now know the definition of a warrior, I will also tell him --

“I am aggressively and energetically engaged in my training (which I consider a cause for my life and well being) since December, and it’s gonna take alittle more that an ankle to take me out. I’m a warrior, I’ve got war tools. You know stuff…to handle war, like guts and might.”

Just like I’ve done for 46 years, ten months and four days. My race, my pace.


Keep the faith y'all,
Stephanie Caroline