Acceptance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThere\u2019s also a seven stage variation but I\u2019m sticking to five for now as I\u2019m more familiar with it.\u00a0 Still, caveat emptor — various critiques have pointed out regarding whichever rubric one uses that grief isn\u2019t processed via an easily delineated roadmap.\u00a0 To be fair, neither really is any facet of life \u2013 it\u2019s all pretty messy and unique and while there are commonalities and shared traits and elements of similarities, there\u2019s also a fair bit of irrational, subjective, individualistic, and truly human variables.<\/p>\n
Again, I digress.<\/p>\n
So yesterday\u2019s 42.195KM run through the streets of Wroclaw began with me in full denial.\u00a0 I was sure the pain I had endured in my left leg and hip would be fine \u2013 I was walking okay.\u00a0 I mean, sure, I had done a couple of training runs here and there to see how recovery was going and my body\u2019s consensus had been almost universally, \u201cUh\u2026 no.\u00a0 This still hurts.\u00a0 A lot.\u201d\u00a0 But I ignored it and kept going as, well, I had paid to run this thing\u2026 and I was here\u2026 and what else was I going to do?\u00a0 It\u2019s not like I could book a tour.<\/p>\n
Which leads to anger \u2013 I was mad at myself for slowing up, for feeling the pain, for falling behind, and for even being out there on the course.\u00a0 I yelled at myself, trying to rally, trying to get my head to focus on something other than the pain.\u00a0 And it went\u2026 well, poorly.<\/p>\n
Hence, the need for bargaining.\u00a0 I tried to convince myself to just get through to the halfway point\u2026 or to the next kilometer marker, or, hell, just to that street sign up ahead.\u00a0 The one all in Polish.\u00a0 No, not that one\u2026 it\u2019s too far away\u2026 how about this street sign?\u00a0 The one right\u2026 here.\u00a0 Yeah, let\u2019s walk a bit here.\u00a0 I\u2019ve earned it, right?\u00a0 The struggle is real and I\u2026<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when the depression hit.\u00a0 The pain was throbbing and chronic and in the same spot as it had been for weeks now.\u00a0 I pretty much had resigned myself to the idea that I was not going to sign up for any more races in 2019, that I\u2019d run what I\u2019d already booked which was about through the 1st<\/sup> quarter of \u201919, and then I\u2019d back off, try and recover, try and regroup. But I found myself worrying about my mental state without the running, and realizing that I\u2019m struggling with weight issues now and that\u2019s with all this running.\u00a0 I also found myself reflecting on the past few days, weeks, months, maybe even years and recalling the wallowing self-pity inherent in even the motivated times of my life.\u00a0 And I realized I sounded like an angst ridden teenage girl on an Afterschool Special dealing with eating disorders, identity crises, and bruising self-esteem issues.\u00a0 And that only made me more depressed as the kilometers slowly\u2026 and I do mean slowly\u2026 ticked by.<\/p>\nI had pretty much accepted that it was time to look not toward doing more down the road but instead to embrace doing less, to acknowledge the diminishing capabilities and recoveries, to understand that distance and time were per mathematical truisms impacting my speed\u2026 and that as the years and mileage took their toll, I\u2019d be slowing down ever more in the future.<\/p>\n
As I slowly came through the closing kilometers of Wroclaw, my paper red cone dwarf hat disintegrated on my head as I sweated out hopes for a 3:15, 3:30, or 3:45 time.\u00a0 I was in a lot of pain, nauseous from lack of food on the course and possibly from as I said in the photo gallery yesterday, my own body feeding off itself to get through to the end.\u00a0 I reeked of rot, the last time I smelled that on me was in Madagascar when another runner lectured me on the course about how he sniffed my dehydration and mentally psyched me out because he wanted to pass me\u2026 or maybe he was legitimately concerned\u2026 albeit as I recall from the awards ceremony later that night he was one of those runners I hope to never see again.\u00a0 The smell and the fear and the sense of failure got to me\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026at best I was doing a very slow jog as I stumbled across the finish line.\u00a0 I walked my way out of the stadium to grab some chalk water and food\u2026 and I realized that even though I had jostled my leg quite badly and stupidly and selfishly and arrogantly for the past 3 hours and 49 minutes, even though I had been in denial and anger over it for hours on end\u2026 and even though I had bargained my way into further depression, I realized I had come to the wrong acceptance.\u00a0 Yes, yes.\u00a0 I\u2019d cut back on races next year for any number of reasons.\u00a0 But as I walked and felt the pain subside with each passing step, I realized that though the running gait and stride might not be ideal for recovery, I wasn\u2019t crippled when I reverted to walking.\u00a0 A wiser person than I would say if it hurts \u201cwhen I do this,\u201d that I should just stop doing that.\u00a0 But considering that even though it hurts when I run, I\u2019m not that much worse off when I walk it off after the fact than I was before I started.\u00a0 Maybe then it\u2019s not that I should \u201cstop doing that\u201d and instead should \u201cbe smarter about doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still planning on curtailing the races in 2019; I think I should see about building in some more recovery time to try and fix this physical and mental deterioration.\u00a0 Boston is therefore definitely out.<\/p>\n
However, I may still go in search of something new and different and strange and unique.<\/p>\n
Because life is messy.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019m about as messy as they get.\u00a0 It may be time, now more than ever, to accept that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is the first day for Boston Marathon 2019 registrations.\u00a0 To submit a time today though you\u2019d need to have beaten the qualifying time by 20 minutes or more.\u00a0 That\u2019s not me for sure. According to the BAA\u2019s registration date calculator, I could try and submit my time a week from today, assuming there are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a><\/p>\n