TheBanyanTree: potential

[Indiglow]

You are so awesome!  
J

--- On Mon, 2/14/11, Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:


From: Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu>
Subject: TheBanyanTree: potential
To: "banyantree" <thebanyantree at remsset.com>
Date: Monday, February 14, 2011, 9:24 AM


I told my running buddy (and co-worker) Tanya this morning, "Friends don't let friends run 17 miles."  But that's what we did yesterday--17 long miles--and even encouraged each other to keep going.  With friends like that, you need a lot of Ibuprofen.  The last 3 or 4 miles were pretty damned painful.  I feel fine today except that my legs are pretty stiff, but they are loosening up more as the day goes on.  We've just about proven to ourselves that we can run a marathon in April, but we were sitting there yesterday, on the benches at the end of the rail trail at the end of our 17 miles, bone weary and aching and mud splattered up to our knees, asking ourselves why the hell we want to.

Of course we know why we want to, it just sometimes defies reason.  Tanya wants to because she hasn't run a marathon and wants to take on that test.  It's the next logical step since we both ran several half marathons this past year and did pretty well for a couple of weekend warriors.  The marathon is sort of the holy grail of road running.  I want to because I'll be fifty this year and I wanted a challenge to mark the occasion.  Maybe I have something to prove.  Not necessarily that I can run 26.2 miles (I ran the Chicago Marathon when I was 25 years old, and yes, I know, now, that I could do it again) but that I can rise to a challenge, that I have it within me to reach a reasonable goal that I set for myself.

It's always been important to me to push myself physically and mentally.  Just part of my personality, maybe.  Even though I meditate, "stillness" is not a characteristic that I possess in large quantity, in mind or body.  Since I work in the ever-changing field of computer programming I get enough mental challenge just by showing up for work everyday, so my mental challenges these days are mostly limited to reading classical works or other books that I decide, in my own humble view, are important to read.  But goals that put this human sack of bones and muscles to the test are most enticing (and possibly addicting).  I've climbed a 14K mountain, run a marathon, learned to ride a motorcycle, rock climbed, spelunked some scary caves here in limestone country, hopped a moving train, jumped off a cliff into a raging river, been thrown from a raft in white water rapids, para-sailed, and various other crazy and not so crazy things.  I wouldn't say I'm
 an adrenaline junkie--I know I don't need these experiences to be happy because I'm just as content and even exhilarated working in my garden or spending time with my sons--but I do enjoy these things.  They give me some sense of my own inner strength and tenacity. They give me a lifetime of amazing memories to fall back on when I need to fall back a little.  We all have our varying ways of finding the source of our personal power and potential, and this is mine.

I'd like to say these physical feats also help to "get me out of my head", and to a degree, running definitely does that.  It is a calming influence on my mind.  But any physical challenge must be met with both mind and body.  Running 17 miles, or even ten miles or two miles, is done as much with the brain as with the brawn.  I've had to really push myself through this training program, and when I've felt like quitting, Tanya has been there for me, backing me up and cheering me on when I am mentally or physically not up for it.  It's good, and for me, essential, to have a training partner.  And a few times, sure, I have let myself off the hook, skipped a training run, stopped to take a break to regroup, did some whining and healing, and started in again.  Part of all of this, and the thing I was most lacking at 25, is the desire to always practice self care.  If I am pushing beyond my limits, I back off.  I respect my body and my existing
 limits, while at the same time having the sure self-knowledge that, with care and consistent effort, I can push those limits out a little further into the great big world of pure potential.

Julie