When My Mojo Makes A Run For It
How I deal when I don’t want to run
A few weeks ago, I stepped off my treadmill feeling awesome having breezed through a loping and light 7-miler. I’d watched a gorgeous trail run on YouTube of a rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon, and I was Mr. Happy Endorphin Guy for a couple of hours afterward.
I have come to terms, emotionally and physically, that I am not racing anywhere anytime soon. The final months of 2020 — after my virtual London Marathon — were filled with days of gentle strength work, some core maintenance, and relaxed running; almost all of it on the treadmill because I am absolutely a weather wimp.
I was still hopeful that a spring road 8k I’ve run for almost 20 years would be my next targeted training goal. I promised myself that even if it went virtual, I’d run it on the actual course. I know; myself and probably 3,000 others.
Then inexplicably, around the beginning of this month, I noticed a creeping malaise. I began having to psyche myself up for an easy 30 minutes. I stopped warming up properly and just “got through” the recipe of the day my current run program asked for.
I stopped reading my magazines. I left my Garmin on the desk in my office where it laid for 2 or 3 days at a time — days without running. I used to joke that work was getting in the way of my running and now I was quietly telling myself, “There’s no time today. Tomorrow…”
So, what could I attribute this sudden unease to? Was there a wave of ennui crashing onto the entire running scene, or was it just me? I wanted to trust that the answers lay within us all, and not that it was only me having an internal melee of sorts with my relationship to the sport.
Racing is back in a big way, even in its limited form and even without the grand mega races. Records have been falling like pine needles off of a dried fir, crushed by incredible athletes wearing techno carbon super shoes. So where is my excitement?
I think I’m simply tired. I think we’re all simply fried and the fatigue is visceral, biting, harsh. Unrelenting in its sneaky way of never letting us see the light at the end of a tunnel I can no longer call proverbial.
It emerged that it was time to make a simple choice. I decided to work hard on getting my missing mojo back, instead of tossing my shoes like a folded hand of cards and waiting for this “to end.” I’ve resolved that the harshest of possibilities — that some form of this new normal may be with us for a very long time — has compelled me to take by the horns an occasion for adaptation and resolve, instead of pizza and the couch.
Maybe if I can kick my inner Brigid Kosgei into gear and fire up the part of Galen Rupp that lives in me somewhere (my pinkie toe?), it will inspire me to start a new chapter. Go ahead and call it a COVID chapter, I don’t mind, because I’ll make it new and challenging. And I’ll make sure to bring a bright attitude and bash this pandemic down as I lace up for a triumphant run. A run I’m hungry for and not one I feel I have to do.
Running makes me a glass-half-full person; why wouldn’t I spin that into a fierce weapon to combat the dull ache these times bring? I will stay safe. I will distance. I will use common sense and respect others. But I will not stay at home. I will run.
If this is the way of running now, and the way racing looks now; I say bring it! I’m ready. And I won’t let the uncertainty that lies a gazillion miles outside of my capacity to change it or get in the way. I’ve got my own new pair of carbon rockets — no, not for any race, but because they inspire me to run fast — and I’m going to lace them up with a smile and fiery intent.
There’s no room in the competitions I have with myself for moping. There is no more room for falling mojo to park its sad soul. I’m here to slay a good run. Now. Today.
See you at the finish.
