Yesterday evening I got back on the treadmill.
What? No applause?
I spent a lot of time, on the treadmill, before the 5K, telling myself, "Don't worry, after the 5K you won't have to do this EVER AGAIN." And now, there I was, on it again.
(Huh. It almost reminds me of the time I came home from my office in tears and told Mark "That's it, I'm done. I'm quitting grad school," and he soothed me and put me to bed and the next morning I was like, "Why are we in the car, driving me back to the university?" And then after a while they gave me a degree. I was GOING to quit, but somehow it never happened. I often have trouble following through with things.)
I have a boring training regimen. After a warm up walk, I turn up the speed. I run that fast for 30 minutes. Then I turn it back down and walk again. The last ten minutes were really tough last night. I kept looking at the ticking down seconds. What? It's only been thirty seconds since I looked at it the last time? Argh!
This is the thing I didn't know about running that I know now. When people say it's hard? It's not physically hard. Maybe if you run with chronic pain it is, I guess; but I don't run with pain, at least not since I lost 50 pounds. My knees don't hurt, I don't get sore. No, it's truly difficult, but the difficulty is all in my head. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but I think I've figured it out, and here it is:
Running is hard because of the desire to stop.
No, really, that's it. That is what makes it hard. At least for me. The whole time I'm running, I keep wanting to stop, and it isn't fun to keep going when you want to stop.
It's no more complicated than that. There are no layers to it. I don't want to stop "because I'm tired" or "because I'm sweaty" or or "because I have other things I want to do more" or "because my throat hurts" or "because the guy on the treadmill next to me just farted" or "because I forgot my iPod" or "because the sun is in my eyes." No, none of those "becauses." It's very simple. I just want to stop. And when I refuse to satisfy that desire, it feels crummy.
It has never been so obvious to me, the difference between long-term and short-term satisfaction, than in running for half an hour. It's almost comical, because the desire to stop (a very immediate desire) is so strong, and the time lapse before I satisfy my other, rationally chosen desire (to stop AFTER I have finished my run) is so very short. And of course, that's one of the things that I remind myself, the whole time: This is only half an hour. Only twenty minutes left. Only fifteen minutes left, I can put up with this for fifteen minutes. And so on and so on. But you know what? The desire to stop NOW doesn't go away. I just keep on refusing to obey it, until the 30 minutes is up.
Somebody asked me if getting through running was like getting through childbirth. (Unmedicated natural childbirth, that is, the only kind I've any experience with.) I know lots of people compare childbirth to running a marathon; I think maybe they do that to put a connotation of powerfulness, strength, worthwhile-yet-difficult endeavor on it in an attempt to cut off the argument of Why would you want to do that when epidurals exist? But no, getting through a 5K doesn't feel anywhere close to childbirth. "Childbirth is maybe easier," suggested Hannah when I brought it up to her yesterday, and I think I agree.
One of the things about childbirth that makes it not quite so mentally hard is that there really isn't a stop and let me off option. I mean, I suppose you can go to the hospital and get numbed, but even that isn't the same as stop and let me off. Plus I started all my labors from a mental space (and a physical space — my home) where "getting numbed" wasn't an option on the table anyway. Maybe it's more like that if you're in a hospital and every 10 minutes someone is sticking their head in the door and offering you an epidural, and maybe after a while it gets too exhausting to keep saying no.
But running is mentally a little bit harder, because it's obvious with every stride that you have a choice, to keep going at the same speed or not. It's very immediate too; you can go from full-tilt to dead stop in just seconds. To keep choosing to keep going is… well, it's not that it's hard to do exactly, it's a small choice, requires just the strength of putting that foot forward, but it's paid back with a measure of anguish, just a bit. The anguish of "I am not getting what I want." Tiny, whiny anguish, but it adds up over half an hour.
So I spend the time distracting myself, not from physical discomfort, but from the mental discomfort of not getting what I want. I point out to myself that I am getting other things that I want: perhaps that I am out in the sunshine and the fresh air, or that I am giving my body its dose of exercise, or that I am, at least for a little while, alone with no one demanding anything from me. I listen to the iPod (music's much better than an audiobook or other kinds of talk — hits somewhere lower on the brainstem I think). I watch syndicated reruns of The Simpsons on the newfangled treadmill televisions they've just installed in our Y. I gaze out the window at people in the parking lot and try to guess which person will unlock which car. I compose blog posts in my head. I think about how I look to the other people in the gym: Do I look like I belong here? That last one, I come back to a lot, because one of the things the interior whiner says to me is Why are you doing this? Who do you think you are?
You know, I've never thought of myself as having a self-esteem problem (rather the opposite), but when I began running, I really started to understand something of what it is like to believe that I am not good enough to accomplish something. I never believed I could do this. When I was a child I convinced myself that physical ability was frivolous compared to intellectual ability, and anyone who thought otherwise was a stupid jock. As I grew older I convinced myself that even if sports accomplishments were worthwhile, they were for other people and not for me — I was not that kind of a person and never would be. It didn't ever occur to me even to try. And yet at the same time I thought of myself as the sort of person who was not afraid to try new things. A blind spot as large as my own body.
A girl I knew pretty well in junior high said to me once on the school bus, "I play soccer because I love to run." I remembered that ever afterward and turned it over my mind in a sort of amazement. How could anyone love to run? She must be one kind of person, and I must be another kind. That's what I believed. And no, I don't know, can't remember, what changed my mind.
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