Barcelona Diary #26 — The Wall

Sunday, oh Sunday.

Long runs are already hitting their peak, and I am just days away of the longest one.

In the mean time, let me tell you the story about last Sunday.

Cold morning, 37K ahead. Destination, Balloch.

Balloch is a lovely place once you get there, with beautiful scenery on the way, good places to rest and a train to take us back home. This is a route that brings be lots of great memories, but that I haven’t done in a couple of years. I remember I loved it, although I never did it during winter.

8am start. Everyone happy, it was happening. Especially in comparison to the previous week.

We got this. I got this.

The further we got, the better I started to feel, no particularly fast have to admit, but I just learned to live with the fact that I’m not a cold weather runner, and that low temperatures can drastically affect my performance. I just felt heavy, not tired.

It remained like this close to the 30K, when things started to change.

Temperatures dropped and I just got slower and slower, legs felt heavier than ever before, like I was not moving forward.

I know the route, I’m looking for a landmark, I’m not seeing it. I’m still far away.

My hands is where I normally feel the cold the most, and I was feeling it to the maximum, I can barely move them, my gloves are not working any more, its hurts.

I stoped. I just wanted to quit, I wanted to scream and ask for help, someone to pick me up. I’m hating it. I cannot finish. I don’t even think I’ll be able to finish that Marathon. All the expectations and Boston dreams are gone. I can’t focus, I can’t think. I hit the wall.

Stop. Breath, just breath.

I kept moving, I had no other choice; and just after that, I was running again. After all the noise, my head just went blank, and managed to get back one step after the other. I started meditating. Left all the thoughts aside, good and bad, just focused on the breath.

It’s probably one of the hardest moments, (if not the hardest) I’ve ever experienced while running. All the emotions, all the thoughts, all the feelings in the most brutal form I can remember, a real test.

I managed to finish the route and get all the miles in, and that’s the important part. Thinking about the following week, where the full distance will be the goal seemed daunting at this stage, but not because of that less exciting, at the end of the day, it has to be done.

Life get busy, things get into your head and doubt gets on the way, but no matter what, the trick is about not allowing it to take over. Shake it, run it, kick it.

It’s just a feeling, or an emotion, and you are a runner, so do what you do, keep running, because no matter how far it chases you, after a while, there will only one able to keep up, and we both know who that is.

Just keep going.