Running means something to each individual person; there is, I believe, no definitive, one reason why we all run crazy distances and miles week after week. Some people run just because they are so talented and naturally gifted at the sport. Some people do it to escape the reality of their own lives and just get away. Some do it to constantly tug war with their waistline. The reasons are longer than the distance between Hopkinton and Boylston Street.
The Boston Marathon is my chance for greatness.
I think greatness, albeit a relative term, is something I have craved for throughout my entire athletic career. Anyone who knows me is cognizant of my extreme competitiveness. For better or worse, I am excessively hard on myself. To me, it is the only way I can improve, strive for more and be better than I am now. Many can attest to the fact that I am seldom satisfied at the end of any race. The only races I can be justifiably happy about are PRs. Unfortunately, I haven’t had one of those since June.
This cross country season has been well documented in its utmost frustration. While my last race was my best race of the season (and perhaps a PR effort at the always menacing Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx), I still left the season without ever breaking 28 minutes in the 8K. Even with the (even more well documented) effort and work I put into the season this year, racing times never came together to what I had hoped. Those results on websites and racing bibs I pin to the wall of my dorm room are painstaking memories of that brutal reality.
After running almost two minutes slower than my marathon PR at Boston in April of this year, and the lack of improvement this cross country season, that desire and need for greatness burns deeper than your legs and lungs at the summit of Heartbreak Mountain Hill.
Going into this round of marathon training, there are some inescapable fears I have been dealing with. The fear of maybe that, because I do not possess the natural running talent of some of my peers, that I have peaked as a runner to the point where I cannot improve any more. Because of my lack of PRs lately, I can only quiver at that thought. Since I'm still a relative running fledgling and have only ran competitively for 2 1/2 years, I will not accept this as an answer. I know I can still improve.
Yet, what hurts more, what thought is more suffocating than a 10 mile run in 100-degree weather, is the fear of failure.
Even if I must create my own enemies in my head, I have this undeniable necessity to prove as many doubters wrong as I can and achieve my goal. I saw Boston last year as my chance for greatness and it didn’t happen. I see Boston next year as one of my last chances for greatness and flat-out refuse to have it any other way. Without breaking two hours and 40 minutes, or even earning a PR, any result is just a waste.
Maybe, likely, this entire path I must take to “prove” people wrong or attain what I think is something great is all in my head.
Maybe it’s selfish.
In the most brutal of candor, I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why I am wholeheartedly compelled and possessed by under 2:40 in Boston. Maybe I’m even running away (figuratively and literally) from my own failures which is why I must accomplish this feat. What I cannot deny is that there is some hole inside that beckons me to do this one way and one way only. It's the way where I'll finally, after a near 22 years of existence, feel like I belong, feel like I've accomplished something magnificent, feel like a success.
That way is greatness.
No comments:
Post a Comment