Self doubt & rebellion

Feeling real broken up.

On Monday, the atmospheric river that had been winding its way over the Pacific for days drenched Los Angeles well beyond the saturation point. The rain had been intermittent all weekend, but the 30 hours between 2pm Sunday and 8pm Monday was a steady, bucketing downpour, almost without break. 

I wanted to run, so I drove to my start point at 7pm, sat in my car, and wondered if it would stop. There was a time in my life when rain would not have stopped me, when as long as lightning wasn’t striking, I would have run. But now — am I different? My logic was this:

1. I’m running in old shoes. Old, flat, very slippery shoes. And the ground is very slippery on city streets, up and down hills. 

2. I turned my ankle running in full daylight just 3 weeks back, and it’s still slightly swollen, which is weird and has never happened before. It’s the second time I’ve turned that ankle in the past year, and it’s feeling kind of beat up. Turned ankles are painful, and I don’t want another one. 

3. I don’t want to get sick. This one, you may scoff at. I know there are hundreds of hard-core winter runners out there, who gear up and get outside in sub freezing temperatures. My lower temperature limit has always been 27 degrees Fahrenheit; I find that below that, I don’t really have good runs and it’s not worth it. A huge reason I moved to Los Angeles was because I wanted to have more pleasant days out of the year to run in.  

Finally, at 8pm, I sighed and gave up the wait. I turned on my car and drove glumly home, feeling a big, empty gap in my day, even in myself. Once home, I did chores like any other adult: I meal prepped; I fed the baby; I changed her. After a while I realized that I couldn’t hear raindrops. I listened; the rain had stopped. 

I stormed into the bedroom and said incredulously to my husband “It’s stopped raining!!” It was as if the timing was perfect to just make it so I couldn’t run.  

“Do you want to go now?” he asked. 

“No, it’s too late…there’s a window [of opportunity], you know?” It was already almost 9pm, and I have a baby who wakes up twice every night. I go to bed at 10pm. I went back to the kitchen and started this post; this post about the responsible skipping of training runs so that you can have better training runs later. I looked outside again and again. I felt diminished. Diminished by my lack of chutzpah and my caution, but also fine with it, somehow. I felt like not going was the right decision, the adult decision. There’s always tomorrow to run. 

But of course it wasn’t the right decision, and I knew it. 

I listened to the rain not pattering down and whipped back into the bedroom. “I’m going. I’m going now; please turn off the oven when the timer goes off!” I said to my husband as I pulled on my leggings and sports bra. 

“I will; have fun!” He called after me. I grabbed the one warm hat I have and my warmest, water-resistant jacket and tumbled out the door. 

Outside, it turned out to still be raining, but not hard, not buckets. I got into the car and drove right back to one of my regular routes. Nothing had moved; even my parking spot was still there. I got out of the car and trudged up the hill to my start line. It was a misty, almost soaking sort of rain, but I didn’t care. I started immediately as I hit my imaginary line. 

Friends, it was glorious. 

No one was in the streets; no one sat at the outdoor tables on Sunset Blvd; no one almost backed into me in the parking lot I always cut across. The city, sodden, depressed, discombobulated, was closed, except to me. I was running. 

It only take a few minutes to run, really, in comparison to your whole day. But in those short 3 miles, as I felt my breath lift out of my chest and my arms and legs ache, I felt all the freedom that brought me to running the first time, when I was 8 and the vastness of a 1 mile fun run on a Georgia levee was as big to me as the whole sky. I felt all the privilege of a strong, healthy body and a safe place to run in. I felt all the wicked rebellion against common sense and anyone who had ever doubted anything about me. I felt wild and free and powerful.  

Before I ran on Monday night, I was weighed down by self doubt: was a still a runner? Had I lost my edge? Was it just parenting small children or was this something more permanent? When I let myself go out into the night, into the rain, I was myself again. The small, rebellious, strong, wondering self that gets to participate in this tiny, wondrous event every night. Not for anyone, because I’ll never be sponsored or win another race, but just for me. Just for my soul. 

I hope you are not being soaked by an atmospheric river right now, but if you are, don’t let it keep you inside. Get out there, friends: go run.