Paige and I are trying to choose our next marathon. We know how lucky we are to say this at all—the audacity of it at ages 46 and 51, to be able to train and race! We joke that one day soon we will be wearing Chicos capris, drinking lattes, and going for walks.
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And some days, that actually sounds kind of nice. But mostly we just love to run and want to run together as long as we are blessed to do it. We know it’s a gift, so we treasure it.
The first big step is signing up at all. Then there is training. Then there is the event itself. All three require high levels of courage and commitment. All involve showing up and putting yourself out there. So we’re in phase one and two at the moment.
This morning on our training run we could have just done a nice, mellow little lake loop and called it a day. But no, Paige threw out the idea of parking by Barton Springs and saying hello to our long-lost acquaintance, Wilke.
Wilke is a hill that can be friendly, or not. Wilke is somewhat moody. This is nothing I wouldn’t say to Wilke’s face. Paige’s neighborhood has a lot of hills, and we start and finish our run by her house most days. Paige had the nerve, as we approached Wilke, to say, “Wow, that doesn’t look too bad anymore!” That’s like scuba diving and saying, “Aw, what a cute little Great White! Maybe I’ll pet him?”
Runner's World coach Budd Coates gets you ready for the fall racing season with these hill intervals.
By our sixth and final hill repeat, my wingman recanted her stance on Wilke. Sorry, I didn’t fully respect you, girl—Paige said to the hill.
It’s not the way she starts, which is gentle enough I suppose, but it’s her finish. If she were a wine, I would describe her finish as acidic, with a bit of a bite. Three quarters of the way up, Wilke shows you who’s boss. And guess what, it isn’t you.
On our third repeat, in between gasping, panting storytelling about everything that’s going on in our lives, it occurred to me that a theme has been running through my life lately. That theme is resistance.
I am realizing that I spend an unnecessary amount of energy on resistance. Whether it’s resisting the fact that my teenagers are growing up, or resisting a lesson that God is trying to teach me, or resisting what I know in my core about my current relationship, or resisting what my therapist pointed out the day before—it’s all a waste of energy expended in an effort to deny and procrastinate doing what is right in front of me.
In fact, I wonder if I stopped wasting so much energy resisting, how much better I would actually be able to navigate the challenges and adventures in my life.
RW HALF & FESTIVAL:
Training sometimes involves learning to overcome resistance. We wake up early when we feel like sleeping. We go to bed when we feel like staying up too late. We choosing better fuel. We follow the plan even though we feel lazy.
We seek hills when there are plenty of flats. We change it up on purpose when we feel comfortable or stagnant.
When we train right, we intentional choose the harder path, and soon the hard things begin to feel a little easier.
What are you resisting in your life these days? And how would your life look different if you stopped resisting and trained yourself to lean in, instead?
Kristin Armstrong is a mother, a writer, and a runner. She has written six books, including her latest, Running Was His Life. Then Came Putin’s War.
