Facing the Bears

I’ve been reading a lot about fear lately, trying to understand it and its power over me.  When I was a child, I was terrified of the dark.  I’d throw obnoxious tantrums when my parents tried to break my need of a nightlight, certain beyond doubt that there was something that was going to crawl out of my closet and tear me limb from limb.  I wasn't afraid that it would kill me, but that it would maim me and leave me in horrible, bloody agony.  I’m sure that says something about how my mind works.  But the fear of the dark and something coming out of the unknown to attack me and render me helpless has stayed with me my whole life.

I’ve learned to face it.  I've gone on backpacking trips by myself, sleeping in the woods miles away from anything and forcing myself to listen and identify sounds so that they stop being fodder for my overactive imagination.  I’ve made myself get up to investigate strange noises, and found that facing fear really is the key to dealing with it.  It doesn't stop me being scared the next time a mouse (rabid zombie-bear) is rampaging through my campsite, but it gives me the strength to know that keeping my eyes squeezed shut and letting my imagination run wild is more scary than seeing a mouse crawl into my backpack.

I haven’t changed much from the child who would rather throw a tantrum than quietly get up and turn on the nightlight, but I know now that the demons are inside my own mind, and they are more treacherous, subtle and destructive than anything my childhood mind could have conceived.

I have always wanted to be a runner, but it was a long time before I had the courage to start. I was afraid of looking stupid, afraid of being bad at it. When I’d tried to join the track team in high school, my brother told me that the coach had suggested I try one of the field sports like throwing because I clearly wasn’t a runner.  I’m sure there are many people out there who would have proven them both wrong, but that wasn’t me.  I stopped even trying to do sports altogether.

A lifetime later, after my divorce, I just started running.  Yup, just like Forrest Gump.

And when I first started started, I was terrified of injury.  I never really pushed myself because I didn’t want to go “too far.”  I have flat feet and I’d been a smoker for years, so my lungs were weak. I couldn’t comprehend those folks I read about who went from couch potato to marathon in just a few months.  I felt like I needed to spend a few years building a base before I’d ever be able to tackle something like that.  I walked at least three times during my first 5K, and didn’t enter another race for over a year, consoling myself with the fact that I’m just not a competitive runner.

And for a few more years, I kept telling myself that marathons and such were just simply beyond me.  Even with my sorry excuse for “training,” I had managed to end up with a case of ITB strain, sometimes my knees were a bit wonky, and once I almost twisted an ankle.  Almost, my friends. It was a near thing.

I managed an outward appearance of blase disinterest.  I didn’t want to run marathons. They’re always too crowded, and I’m the epitome of an introvert: I don’t play well with others.  Because I have hips, thighs and flat feet, my body clearly isn’t made for speed, so it’s understandable that I can’t hit an 8-minute-mile, let alone string a bunch of them together to the point that I might be considered “competitive.”  I don’t need a medal or certificate or t-shirt to prove myself. I don’t need to be measured against others in order to feel validated as a runner.

On and on and on.  I did another 5K, then a 10K.  I even worked my way up to a half-marathon,  all the while carefully holding back to ensure that I never “over-did” anything.  I read books and blogs and magazine articles about people who ran ultras, telling people how crazy that was and secretly wondering what it might be like to be one of them.

So I did a couple of low-key races, hardly telling anyone about them before hand, not really sticking to any solid training plan even though “scheduled” runs make very convenient excuses for getting out of awkward social invites.

But those races all lacked something I was searching for.  They weren’t driving me. I felt no passion about finishing a 5K or a 10K.  It was just something I felt like I ought, as a runner, to want to do.  There was never any fear that I might not finish or that I might have taken on more than I could handle.  

And secretly, in a quiet back corner of my mind where I’ve stowed away all those unrealistic childhood fantasies and expired adulthood dreams that I’ve learned to give up on, there was a little idea growing.

Maybe I do want to run long distances.

Maybe I do want to run fast.

Maybe I do want to run races and have people cheer me on and have tokens to collect my memories on.

Maybe I even want to make friends with other runners and share our experiences and tips and techniques and get lost on crazy trail runs and have stories that all start with, “Hey, you remember that time when…”

***

When I stood in the starting corral at the Vermont City Marathon (aka “Burlington Marathon” to us locals), I listened to the nervous chatter of the hundreds of runners around me.  A lot of it involved people confirming their expected finish times, last-minute pieces of advice, and a lot of nerves.  There seemed to be a lot of people around me who weren’t sure if they could finish.  I felt odd, an island in the midst of a river of like-minded runners.  I had no doubt I could finish, and the only question was how fast I’d do it.  I wasn’t expecting anything Olympic, but I hadn’t trained for time and didn’t know what to expect from myself.  I wondered if I’d missed the point of it.

I didn’t even have goals set for my splits.  In fact, I barely understood the value of splits.  It seemed like a lot more math than I wanted to do while running.

I barely squeaked in under 4 hours with a 3:56.  And here’s the clincher: I wasn’t pleased with the race, but not for the reasons you might think.

I had wanted to fail.  

I wanted to push so hard that I puked when I got done.  I wanted to cross the finish and feel like I couldn’t take another step. I wanted my legs to be jell-o and my lungs to be fire.  I wanted to feel like I’d poured my very soul out on that course and couldn’t have run another step even if angry zombie-bears were chasing me.  I wanted to feel like I was in critical need of resurrection.

But I didn’t.  I had held back, set it on cruise control at a 9-minute mile and drifted on along.  I walked through several aid stations and even took time to admire the scenery. I felt good at the end.  I even said to a friend, “that was kind of easy.”  

I hadn’t even hit “the wall” that runners talk about so much.  Why?  Because I am afraid to.

I fear finding my limits.  I fear going all-out, giving every last ounce of myself to something, and finding that I fall just shy of the mark.  I fear hitting the mark without reaching my limit.  I fear committing myself to something enormous and then finding out part way through that I can’t finish.  

And yet I desperately want to.

It wasn’t until running my first ultra that I finally encountered the wall.  But I only grazed it, pulled back and found a way to keep going.  I finished the race feeling like I’d come close to failing, but not close enough.  I crossed the finish line. I could still walk afterwards.  A few days later, I realized I wasn’t even sore.  Lots of runners talk about the depression that can follow a big event, similar to postpartum depression.  Having finished the event that they’ve trained for and focused on for months, they suddenly find that their motivation is gone and they have no desire to run at all.

And for a few weeks, I lost the drive to run.  If my ultimate goal is to find my limits, I’ve failed miserably so far.  But my imagination can still run wild with me.  I imagine training for long hours only to pull a muscle, twist an ankle or fall off a mountain and end my so-called running career just as I’m getting going.  I see myself finishing a tough race too easily, being catastrophically injured, losing my way running at night and getting eaten by zombie-bears.  Failing to fail, or managing to fail and then not being able to overcome it. My imagination can come up with a million fears in the time it takes to lace up my shoes, and every one of them tells me to give up now.

And then one day last week, I remembered something.  Zombie-bears have a habit of turning out to be mice.  And mice are pretty cute and harmless when they’re not carrying Hantavirus.

So I signed up for a 100 mile race.

It’s time to face the bears.

Photo credit: barnorama.com