Long runs are brutal and I’m a rookie at it.
It’s not entirely true. I hate that ones life is often the sum of what people can see. We are so much more than the current season we are in. We have a past and it counts. People seldom ask though, which means they don’t want to know.
I used to run twenty kilometers with a good friend, fit a catch up, a beer and burger in all after work on the weekly. This morning I ran twenty kilometers and it took me four hours and forty-eight minutes. Please don’t do the math, my running is a work in progress.
I used to sprint and race long distance at school. I went unbeaten for quite a few years. There’s a part of me that still believes that that little girls talents live on in adult Stef. So to claim that I have always been slow is not entirely true either yet my experience in Cape Town has me pondering if there are any runners left who don’t own watches and isn’t chasing the five minute per kilometer pace.
I had a mental and emotional breakdown at kilometer twelve. Ugly cried for a good long while sitting on a rock just off trail. I cried about being forty. I cried about rejection. I cried about this darn frozen shoulder and the only time it isn’t aching is when I’m moving through nature, convinced it wants me to be a nomad. I cried about the grit and brace it takes to do life alone. I cried about how heart wrenchingly beautiful this natural world we are living in is yet we manage to put our selfish needs above the source that sustains us. We are not God or gods, we are mortal beings and life is only a second long. I cried about the loss that has gone and the loss still to come. Life is never without it. I cried about how gut wrenchingly invisible I feel most of the time. But mostly, I cried about having to accept all of it just as it is.
Aiming for sixty kilometers is hard. I have been amazed at how well my body is adjusting and adapting to longer time on the legs. Our bodies are next level intelligent things. But up until now my weekly runs were ten kilometers twice a week and one fourteen kilometer run. So todays push to twenty was a bit much but I clearly needed a good cry, so there’s that.
Long runs are brutal yes, but I don’t remember the last time I got to spend so much quality time with myself, facing all the feels I am so good at hiding on the daily.
Here’s to really leaning into living
x
