“The transitions are supposed to be messy.”
I’m fumbling through yoga poses, bending my middle-aged body against its will in a stifling hot room of midriff-bearing spandex as the yoga instructor offers this gentle reassurance.
The comment isn’t pointed solely at me (surprisingly) – she’s sort of philosophizing this to herself and to the whole room all at once while guiding us through a pose sequence.
“You have to feel your way through the transitions to get into the right position,” she says.
This is by far the least judgmental yoga instructor I’ve ever met. Usually they’re side-eyeing and nudging people correctively, forming rows of perfectly posed yogis in expensive athleisure wear.
This is the nurturing vibe I needed today, I think to myself, as I work out the niggles and aches through my imperfect transitions. Yoga holds such a healing energy for me, not just in the way of stretching out sore muscles but as a vehicle for grounding, centering, uncorking emotions I’ve been shoving off to deal with another day.
In fact, her comment about allowing transitions to be what they are latches on to something in my subconscious, and I feel my eyes tear up a bit.
*
Two years ago, everything began grating on me. The squeeze from all directions. The elusive work-life balance. The untreated depression and anxiety and sleep deprivation. The high-energy second puppy demanding more of me than I imagined. The 35 pandemic pounds I was too exhausted to do anything about, so I just poured myself a glass of wine and hoped I wouldn’t impulse-order Taco Bell at 10 p.m. again.
So I did the obvious, logical thing: I put myself into the lottery for the 2023 Chicago Marathon.
I really missed running. And I hoped that with a goal this big, one I had wanted since 2015, I would be forced to make space to prioritize it in my life again. I was desperate to carve out a sliver of me-time. Besides, I thought, what are the odds I’ll get selected through the lottery again?
As it turns out, when you put that kind of distress call out into the universe, the odds are suddenly in your favor. By some miracle, I got selected.
Oh, but all those things that incessantly grated on me? They didn’t stop. They didn’t magically disappear. I just began to pile miles on top of them very inconsistently, hauling my overweight, 40-year-old out of shape and out of practice body through workouts I had no business doing. The build was nowhere near gradual enough from where I was starting from (which was…the couch, with a glass of wine in one hand and a crunchwrap supreme in the other).
I was running miles ahead of myself instead of focusing on running the mile I was in. The transitions are not supposed to be quite THIS messy.
When my back gave out while I was trying to lift something heavy in the garage, I knew it was time to defer my marathon entry to 2024. I shoved off my emotions to deal with another day.
*
“Average pace of 12:36 per mile.”
My running app announces this to me after three miles in 80-degree heat. I am slow, on purpose. My legs need to log many, many more slow runs to eventually go fast, or to even have a shot at finishing the 2024 Chicago Marathon. This is how you train your heart rate to stay lower over long distances.
The younger 8-minute-mile version of myself would have loathed and distrusted this approach. (She also got injured.) But today I understand: it’s a transition. You feel your way through until you land where you’re supposed to be.
And if something doesn’t feel right, you change position – whether it’s a job, a daily routine, or a pressure squeezing on you until you can’t breathe. I made some adjustments to cut out some of the things that were holding me back from myself.
(No worries, I still have the dog.)
To be in the present moment, feeling all the emotions as they happen, running the slow mile I’m supposed to be in, feels like the right position. And not messy at all.
See you in Chicago October 13th.
#justkeeprunning
Running Girl 