Stories of marathon runners, triathletes and endurance athletes of all kinds fascinate me. Add extreme mountain climbers to the list too. I vanish when reading and watching stories like Touching the Void, The Alpinist and 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible. I’m sucked right into the screen or page, and I disappear. Weird, though, because I don’t aspire to scale frozen mountains in wicked conditions like the icons of the extremes. But, I’ve always wanted to do a marathon.
(Insert needle scratch across vinyl transition to less exciting mind music).
I was riding my elliptical machine one dark morning … when I had an idea flash through my mind.
Even though I love exercise and will practice martial arts in some way for the rest of my life, my 2023 intention for exercise has seen a reframe: My focus is to move my energy and move my mood by moving my body. In this way, I’ve created space for new ideas to sprout where in the past they may have been crowded out by a feeling of lack, self-loathing and not-enoughness until a certain amount of minutes, miles or mountains were clocked. That sucks the enjoyment right out of the process for me. That approach was a tired old story, and it was time to change it.
Presently I’m doing what I can with what I have because an ankle and achilles injury combined with similarly precarious knees means running a marathon right now doesn’t feel like the right move. But the flash I mentioned was this: I don’t have to accept that ‘I can’t do a marathon.’ Why not challenge myself to a marathon on the elliptical? Start there. It’s not sexy, but who cares?
I decided I would do it. It would be a solitary event. It would lack the sweaty, salty energy of the collective, the mass of humanity moving as one, the cheers, the music, the water stations and the cool outfits. But it would still be a formidable goal for me. Silently self-motivated. Something to work toward. Who could I become in the process? How could a goal like this shape my future?
I put podcasts in my ears and got to work: Ed Mylett, Rich Roll, Ologies, Mobituaries, Across the Dinerverse, Andrew Huberman. I put books in my ears: The Power of One More, The Wealthy Gardener, The Mountain is You, How The Word Is Passed, Braiding Sweetgrass, Why Didn’t You Tell Me?, The Untethered Soul, More Than Enough, The Tools, Unreasonable Hospitality, Emotion by Design, Forest Bathing.
I read in an article by the Mental Health Commission of Canada that “goal setting is an expression of hope, and fostering optimism for the long term may help you get through some current challenges.”
I had no idea.
I already felt I had a lot to think about. My job of many years was ending, and as I looked out from the elliptical into the darkness of that pre-dawn morning, I was looking into the darkness of my imminent unknown professional future. My friend Alie taught me that her friend Cole taught her about anticipatory grief. I think I was experiencing that with respect to my imminent job loss, and I needed to do something with myself to feel it all. The marathon would be my anticipatory grief therapy, I guess. It would be my off-ramp from this career and my on-ramp to my future self.
Training and Mental Blocks
I found a marathon training schedule online and pretended the recommended running miles were meant for me on the elliptical. Week after week I logged more miles, and while it was easier on my body than running would have been, it was a physical challenge and a mental one too. Psychologically, moving in one place for so long, and yet not moving through space, was a peculiar kind of mental challenge. I picked a Marathon Day date. It was to be February 4, 2023— the day after my work would end.
On Christmas Day of 2022, I did my longest ‘run’ on the elliptical — 18 miles. Talking with people who have run marathons, I was told that if you can do 18, you can do 26.2 miles.
On January 2, 2023, my resolve was shaken when our family’s hearts were shattered. We had a death in our family, and the loss of our loved one was sudden and devastating. I knew I should keep training, but it all derailed me. My mileage and focus faltered, and my tight adherence to the training schedule was broken. ‘Did it even matter now? What’s the point?’
After about a week of this thinking, I decided I needed to use my grief to continue rather than stopping short of my goal. I was so close. I needed to get to the finish line. Really, I needed to get to the starting line. Grief can be so paralyzing. With uncertainty around the timing of our loved one’s funeral, I knew if I was going to do the marathon, I’d need to move it up. (There are benefits to a marathon of one. The race day can change on a dime). I knew that I needed to do this marathon and meet this goal now more than ever.
Setting a goal that’s out of our comfort zone does give us hope. It gives us structure. It reminds us we can still fight. In fact, the act of goal-setting demands hope from us, and it requires discipline. And when we commit to it, the goal gives us safe harbor. The discipline brings a kind of freedom.
Marathon Day
On the morning of January 15, 2023, I went outside into the garage and started. If you know me, you know I love dates and markers and time stamps. As I got on the elliptical, it occurred to me that 30 years to the day prior, on January 15, 1993, I waved goodbye to my family as I boarded a plane in ice cold Minnesota and flew to Hong Kong where I would live for the next six years. That was a flight into the unknown just as this was to be a ride into the unknown. Glennon Doyle’s voice floated through my mind: “We can do hard things.” We, because it’s always some kind of we. Not I. My family has been encouraging me on the road to this goal and every other goal I’ve ever held.
So on this date 30 years later, I felt even more reflective. I put a story in my ears to accompany me on my long garage ride. As I set out on my journey into the unknown, I listened to a book called Girl In Translation, by Jean Kwok. It is a story about another kind of journey into the unknown. About pain and grief and change and poverty and challenge and cultural differences and loss and determination and uncertainty and grit and friendship and triumph and overcoming and grace and the kindness of strangers.
I pushed play, and I let my body and the story take me away, step by step by step. Over the course of the next 26.2 miles, I traveled to Hong Kong and Brooklyn, through childhood and adolescence, through pain and grief and back again. I smiled and waved when Eric served as my one in-person cheering section, water re-filler and snack deliverer. I crossed my invisible finish line in 4 hours and 10 minutes. I stepped off. It was done. This was not easy for me. I could barely walk for the next two days. But I did it. We did it.
Now What
I don’t study grief. I’m not an expert on it. But I’ve learned there are stories inside of grief. Stories of love and longing, stories of celebration and appreciation, stories of guilt and regret. No one can ever tell me story isn’t powerful.
Similarly, no one can tell me that goals aren’t powerful. The goals we set or do not set… they write our stories and shape our futures. Goals can even help us through the toughest chapters of our life stories.
I think stories are even more powerful than we give them credit for. Imagine if companies, organizations, teams and families could harness the power of each person’s story the way turbines harness the power of water. We could light up faces with love and light up the world in a whole new way. If only…
When goals, grief and gratitude collide, maybe we can transmute our pain into energy. Maybe we can lay a few more railroad tracks to our unknown futures. Maybe we can believe that we are capable and we are strong and that together we can rise.