There's an adrenaline surge that rushes around inside me each time I know I am about to go on a run. It's left over, I think, from my competitive track and field days as a kid.
The rain would often be pelting on the red shale track; I'd stand behind the start line, kicking my legs nervously, gangly and pale in nylon running shorts and a track club singlet. When I think of those moments before the gun went off, I remember the smell of cigarette smoke unfurling from behind the rain weary bleachers: my dad, chain smoking, vibrating, and occasionally yelling stuff more appropriate at a world class sporting event than an 11-year-old girls 400 meter race.
"Kill it Kristin!"
"Smoke 'em all!"
"Remember your kick!'
I will never forget the feelings that reeled through me during those races. My legs were lead weights at first, and my Nike Air shoes felt heavy on the track; thump, thump, slosh, often through the rain. Then my arms would start on their natural pump and my mind would clear of all nerves because all there was room for was blankness. I remember so many times I'd talk myself out of quitting, just quietly running off the track because my heart was going to burn through my chest, my legs were going to crumple in a defeated heap underneath me. My legs never crumpled and my heart never quit. I never ran off that track in competition, but I had to talk myself out of it at least once every race, for years and years.
***
Running is different for me now, it's no longer a competition, I no longer have a slightly obsessive father bellowing at me from behind the bleachers. But I still have that drive in me: I want to be faster, I want to taste the experience of my body at full tilt, I want to work so hard physically that my mind goes blank. If all those things are in place, I feel amazing at the end -- and rather than a gold medal, that's the goal now.
***
Our Crossfit workout today was scrawled on the white board in three simple words: 5 kilometer run. At Crossfit, everything is to the max, and so this wasn't a leisurely jog to the marina and back. This was a: see how fast you can go. Push yourself and see what kind of time you can put up. A man (who happens to be a triathlete) from the morning's class already posted a 20 minute time -- smoking fast. I could see Corey eyeballing the time and my legs were already gumming over and I could feel that familiar surge.
There was no gun, just an earnest - Go! and the odd group of us took off down the sidewalk in our sleepy village by the sea - an odd group. Muscled, graceful Corey was out in front, I thumping lump-footed and Mr. Bean-like behind himl, Marina, a twenty-something serene-faced girl right behind me. "Tiny" followed, a 6'4" young man with tree-trunk legs and the best grin ever, and then the man who lost 22 pounds in one month eating Paleo. A pretty dark-haired girl brought up the rear. A mismatched group with one singular focus: run. We were all giving it our max.
***
It only takes a few minutes of running hard for me for my brain to stop its normal obsessing about proposals and numbers and conference calls and clients and to ratchet in on the mundane: why, for the love of god, do squirrels dart in such a sketchy, undecided manner across the street? No wonder they get hit. And then I think: The snow on the peak of that mountain looks like marshmallow candy and the water is almost green today and how did I get so lucky to live here? These thoughts are interspersed with four letter streams-of-consciousness about the length of the hill, the feeling in my left butt cheek where I bailed in the gym the other day. My breathing evens, I feel strong, I am fully cognisant of the strength and vitality of my body and I feel good that I am using it to its fullest capacity right now. I feel like stopping, just for a second, at the crest of a large hill, my legs feel like jellybeans and my lungs are on fire. But I know that feeling is fleeting. Screw it. I keep going.
I keep sight of Corey's blue shirt the whole way, pushing a little harder at the end to close in on him. With the Starbucks by the gym in sight I concentrate: pumping my arms, breathing in deeply, willing my legs faster through sheer force of will.
I finish in twenty three minutes and forty two seconds, a minute behind Corey. My breathing is ragged and I finally allow myself the collapse. I'm already plotting my next run: sub 21 minutes and I know: every minute of that will be painful and miserable and in the end I will be insanely glad I pushed that extra little bit.
There's no gold medal anymore, no red-ribboned reward for pushing through the pain. But the sense of accomplishment, the time of blank brainedness, the tangible knowledge of your mind and body functioning as one unit and the possibility of improvement and greater power mean so much more than those medals ever did.
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