Running Through Nostalgia
I draw a distinction between running while I am training and running while I am not training. The later always has more of an ethereal and dense result regarding writing and quantifying it. I have been trying to reflect on the aspects of training and beyond just the goal and time, why does it feel different. I think I figured it out this past week while fighting through snow storms and work schedules. There are day-to-day experiences, and then there are memories. Memories are distinct. You can visualize them, smell them and even get a moment where you get the original feeling back, even if it’s fleeting.
Even running and racing can be about nostalgia. The feelings in your muscles on a certain day. The way the wind can smell on the first day of a season. The exuberance of achieving a personal record at a race. All these things come with the benefit of creating memories, and then you get the chance to try to recreate them. The good part about running is that it is evolutionary, particularly in the beginning. A truly existential sport because I get to challenge myself and I set the parameters of those expectations. The gift of training is that I am motivated to surpass the previous threshold. Part of it may be to recreate the feeling of getting a “PR “ but in the end, the emotion from the prior race is never recaptured, it is just a different version of me that crosses the finish line. Training is about moving the needle to a new point and new memory.
I am going to delve into the personal, but I promise this will get back to running and training. I recently met a younger woman who was attractive and charming. I don’t necessarily have a type, but if I did, she would fall into that category. And most disturbingly, she shared the name of the woman I dated in my late twenties into my early thirties. Perhaps my last great relationship. Also coincidentally, this young lady is right around the age I was at the time of that relationship. Initially, I fought the urges because of the natural unhealthy impulse to recreate a relationship from when I was 28 years old. But like most men I am weak, and I started to play into this fantasy. Except I came to the quick realization that I wasn’t Marty McFly. I could try to recreate a feeling, but I couldn’t recreate a person.
That thought has been occurring to me all week. It even crossed my mind when trying to come to grips with the election in November and everything that has transpired since. Trying to understand the people who not only voted for Donald Trump but found comfort in his ideology and message. The concept of nostalgia is universal in many ways, specifically when we are most vulnerable. I wanted to find my 28-year-old self again, while Trump’s most ardent supporters thought they found someone who could restore what this Country to what it was in the 1950s. I guess both fantasies intentionally omitted deficiencies of those memories. For my part, it was an immense immaturity that ranged to focusing on work too much and a pack a day cigarette habit. For this country, it was racism and misogyny.
Maybe that is why I feel the need to train after a while of running without purpose. I like the idea of looking forward. The ability to dwell on the past is easy. But focusing on making yourself better is difficult. But it typically isn’t worth it if it’s too easy. So I have wake up in February, the day after a blizzard, and figure out how to navigate ice and snow in the darkness. And the next day, as that snow slowly melts, I have to run through the slop for fifteen miles on a Saturday afternoon because I am not trying to stay buried in the past. I want to dig out and make that new memory. And maybe along the way I can cheat and get a flashback of a feeling I had from my first or second marathon. But in the end, come May, I will be in Pittsburgh, experiencing something completely different and that is what will get me out of bed for the next 12 weeks.
Day 17- 4.00 Miles- Race (PR) / Day 18- 7.1 Miles Regular Run-
Day 19- Flex Day/ Day 20- 7.1 Miles Regular Run/ Day 21- Blizzard
Day 22- 6.1 Miles Easy Run/ Day 23- 15.5 Miles- Long Run
