Running Through the Fog of Self-Doubt
Week 12 - Marathon Training
It is difficult for me to admit that this blog post was almost not written. The reason why it was not to be written is because it deals with a subject that makes me feel uncomfortable.
Failure.
I know all the encouraging adages, and I am very good at telling them to other people when they do not apply to me: Failure is necessary for growth. The only failure is never trying. Blah blah blah.
Week 12 - Training Record
Monday - 8.5 mi EASY
Tuesday - Recovery/Massage
Wednesday - 10.2 mi w/ 8 x 800m @ 3:13 avg.
Thursday - 9.0 mi EASY
Friday - Rest/Recovery from soreness
Saturday - Rest/Recovery from soreness
Sunday - 6.2 mi Progression Run
Total - 33.9 miles
The subject of my failure—and not even real failure, just a perceived failure, a minor setback, a need for recovery, an embarrassing over-estimation of self-assessment—is not easy to make public. That is especially true for today. I have spent the weekend reading an exceptional book called What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggle and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen. It’s the story of Madison Halleran, a successful distance runner in high school, who took her own life after suffering silently her depression and anxiety during her first year in college. Her life was “perfect,” according to those who watched it unfold in social media. But the burden of falling short in comparison to how she saw others exacerbated her vulnerability to be uncontrollably anxious. She was purposeful in designing a social media representation that was the opposite of what she thought of herself.
When it comes to online presence, we are all our own unreliable narrators. We choose details intended to impress, to spur laughter, to acquire “likes.” The platforms (whether Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or blogs) contain the application of filters, both literally and figuratively, to formulate an image, a brand, a consistently patterned persona. And that persona is an idealized manufacturing of how we want to be perceived. The writer David James Duncan once wrote that all writing is fiction, that even non-fiction is fiction. I doubted this when I read it ten years ago, but I’m beginning to think otherwise. Even a blog by Beta O’Rourke, which has been praised for being “unfiltered” in its detail, is carefully crafted to look un-crafted. While recording seemingly irrelevant details of weather patterns and unimpressive accoutrements with a shockingly indifferent attention to proper punctuation and grammar, even his “unfiltered” presentation of self is still filtered. The impression is there to make it not seem like an impression is there.
I am no different. I write this weekly blog, and for what? I have said it is for myself. Then why not keep this in my journal? Why post it online? Of course I want people to formulate a perception of me—one that is carefully manipulated to seem like I don’t care what perception people formulate about me. It’s a house of freaking mirrors that does a good job of convincing—albeit the only one it has convinced is the one who is doing the writing.
And so while I praised myself for my hard work last week that culminated in sixty miles and a near personal best in a 5k, I am sheepishly hesitant to admit this week that I have had to take three days off to nurse tender muscles, joints, and a pervasive flaring up of self-doubt. (Ibuprofen does nothing to curb the swelling of disappointment.) I can hear the professional coach who will not be reading this post scoff: “This is why you should never self-coach. This is why you are a mid-pack runner. Fool who writes a running blog—only the stories of the accomplished matter.”
My initial thought was the turn the blog off. Just shut it down rather than talk about failure and delete the whole thing out of shame for being a sham. Part of me thinks I still should have. But I’m trying to prove a point to myself—that I must explore why I write, why I run. I will not be remembered for either endeavor, so what’s my point of trying?
In the age of digital presence, is there a way to be publicly intrinsic in pursuing our private needs? (What would Sarte say? It’s an existential question.) Sir Edmund Mallory, in the analog days, could point to the crest of Mount Everest and give reason for climbing it: “Because it’s there!” And that satisfied. It was enough then. I try to say the same thing about my writing, about my running a marathon—that I do them because they are there—but the moment I post it to a blog and promote it on social media, the intrinsic yearning becomes an extrinsic need for approval, for likes, for attention, for cheers, for proof that I’m being read.
Week 13 - Training Plan
Monday - Easy
Tuesday - Mile Repeats
Wednesday - Easy
Thursday - Long Hill Repeats
Friday - Off
Saturday - Half-Marathon Race
Sunday - Recovery
Mileage Target - 40-45
I tried to make sense of this while running through the fog today. It was my first day of running since Thursday, the day I felt my adductor muscles on both legs swell and cast off heat, the day I felt a sharp pain in my left shin, got worried, and googled the symptoms of stress fractures. Two days recovery from running proved just what my body needed, but not so for my mind. Distance runners are notoriously anxious and obsessive about training. Self-discipline for a distance runner is more about having the strength to take a day or two off when needed than maintaining a series of days on. After two or more days of not running, the mental energy is looking for an escape. The anxiety is awful. I wanted to reach for a drink.
But today, on Sunday, I went for a run to calm my mind and test my legs. I ran my first mile slowly, hesitantly, waiting for the pain to sharpen. It never did. I ran 8:16. I decided six miles would be good. A short run, but with progression. The thought in my head kept looping—Why do I do this? What is the point?
I sped up (mile 2 was 7:49), but no matter how fast I ran, the fog kept me from seeing further than a hundred meters in front of me.
Why do I need to have a point? Isn’t the presence of a point just another filter? A manufactured sense-making of irrelevant and mindless data?
Yes, I thought, delete the blog. The whole thing is worthless and fleeting.
Mile 3—7:29.
I ran faster.
But isn’t the premise that a point is filter just another filter as well? That calling data “mindless” and “irrelevant” another way of manufacturing sense-making?
Deleting the blog out of “principle” would be a vain act of hypocrisy. But so too isn’t writing it? Shit, this was getting frustrating.
Mile 4 was 7:08.
Why can’t I just go for a run or write? Why should it be a product?
Why fear it being a product?
Ahhhh! Who cares? I chased the fog and tried to catch up to the point where I couldn’t see through it.
Mile 5 – 7:05.
My favorite quote from E.L. Doctorow is this: “Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” I have quoted it at least a dozen times.
I could only see as far as the fog would let me. But it didn’t prevent me from running my last mile in 6:53. I was angry. I was frustrated. I had no idea why. I stopped running, mildly winded. No pain in my adductors or shin.
I grabbed my inhaler from my rear zip pocket and took a puff. I walked around in two circles, looking. Everyone was inside today. No one was outside walking. If I believed in apocalypses, this would be it: to do something with no one watching. What I felt was a lack of resolve, a missing satisfaction. As I started my cool down jog, I forced myself to reach a conclusion: maybe getting through the day was my trip, or perhaps this run was my Everest.
False. Manufactured. Filtered. Bullshit.
But my thought remained persistent: Is it really enough to get home in the dark, or to scale something because it is there? I would like to say that it truly is. It’s just that today it wasn’t. I would like to say that what I have written has brought me closer to knowing why I write and why I run, but all I can see in front of me is the simple fact that the challenge I publicly put on myself is still thirteen weeks away with roughly 700 miles left to run.
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