Everything is the Plan


You can’t run every race in a lab.

There will always be people in your way those first few miles, there will either be a cold start or a hot finish, and you’ll always have to choose between water and the extra 10 seconds. There will be hills and bad pavement and a hot sun; there will be blisters or tight hip flexors or stabbing ankles. Sometimes you will cross the finish line with more left to give, sometimes you’ll barely jog over it, and sometimes you’ll be in bare shoes-kicked-off feet running over gravel. But you’ll always, always cross it. And most of the time you’ll be surprised at your new PR, but sometimes you’ll groan at the sight of the clock and I just want to remind you that the important part is what you feel in the last ninety seconds.

You pick up the pace and you survey your effort level and you give it everything you have. As the legs move numb and the mind zeros in, the skin tingles and you feel only good things and there it is, the euphoria of racing. The reason we do it again. The runners’ high, the moment when pain and pleasure converge for once. When it’s almost all behind you and only this moment matters for once.

And if you feel that moment, if it’s memorable to your soul, you’ve run a race.
You’ve run your race. You’ve run the race, the one that regardless of the numbers on the clock gets you to a thin place where you can see through to real life.

Because what if the meaning of life and the meaning of running wasn’t hurdling your body toward a finish line as fast as possible, but feeling those moving moments to the full? What if the point of all this going is to feel it? To notice how pain and pleasure are two sides of one coin and everything, everything is the plan. And there’s nothing wrong with the finish line, but the it’s the moments getting there that make it worth reaching, and if it weren’t for the miles, the skin wouldn’t tingle at the sprinting.

So don’t look to race in a lab. Race in the mess-ups, in the humid half-way point, in the shoe that is giving your left foot a blister. Because this is your race, and the last ninety seconds are coming.

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