A post-race mindset

I was a little choked up by the time I finally crossed the finish line on Saturday night.

To be fair, you would be, too. Apparently it doesn't matter if you've been hardened by years of love and loss, international politics, the monotony of day-to-day life and the soul-crushing process of watching your hairline recede. Disney has a way of getting to you. And so does running.

~~~

Last Saturday my brother and I ran the Disney Wine and Dine Half-Marathon. It’s was a 10,000+ runner shuffle through the Walt Disney World campus just outside of Orlando, starting at the Wide World of Sports complex and winding through both Animal Kingdom and Disney Hollywood Studios before finishing with a gigantic drunkfest at Epcot. I finished in 2:23.20.

The run itself was so masterfully executed that I couldn’t help but spend the entire jog in awe of, well, everything around me. The sidelines were littered with heart-tugging distractions. There were Disney characters in full regalia posing for photo-ops with runners. There were employees, families, volunteers, and drunk revelers all screaming and shouting your name as you nimbly leaned into each turn off the Oceola Parkway.

And while I was in awe, I didn’t really come to appreciate those perks until I was out of Animal Kingdom and entering the seventh mile of the race. It was during that lonely stretch (look between 6 and 7 on the map above) that the nature of my training-- its successes and shortfalls-- became apparent.

Fitness was not the issue. While Orlando itself is a flat sack of swamp not unlike Houston, the course was littered with overpasses and upward inclines through the artificially elevated sections of the parks. In this way I was actually lucky that I spend the past four months training on a treadmill with an incline setting rather than dashing through the sweltering, flat expanses of the Houston Heights. Coupled with the distance-building regiment I followed to reach my goal, I’d say the run itself was fairly painless.

I mean, it hurt. Oh god it hurt. But physically, I never doubted myself throughout the entire race. My lungs were tar-free and my heart was pushing ruby-red, oxygenated life force to my legs. Have you seen these legs?

I had to part ways with my brother around the fifth mile marker because cruel asthma was tightening its icy grip around his airways. That felt like a scene out of a war movie, with him belting out “go on! go on!” between breaths. And barely a mile after that heart-wrenching moment, I looked around at the costumed couples and the families on the sidelines and this place from my childhood and I felt very, very alone.

Crap.

~~~

Now, running and I have a long and somewhat complicated relationship going back decades. No kidding. It all started in kindergarten-- no, wait. It starts with me in a stroller, being pushed by my grandparents up and down paved sand dunes in coastal small town America. They were runners.

Then there I am, in kindergarten, a skinny and slightly blonder version of myself winning mile-long fun runs with my dad. He would coach me to the last 100 yards or so, then “go, Kyle, go!” and I would take off in a sprint to the finish. He was quite the runner, too.

I’ve got a cigar box back home full of blue ribbons from these events. Almost all of the Christmas Morning pictures from my childhood feature this small, blonder, but just-as-white image of young me donning a way-oversized commemorative T-shirt from some fun run that me and my dad ran together.

As I passed from elementary school into middle school, running became less of a thing for all of us. I was focused on computers and games and this new concept of homework and making friends. I became a little more thick and stout and my achievements all shifted toward academic performance. My dad began experiencing some tightness in his knee and after he tore his ACL coaching my 7th grade soccer team, that was about it for him and running.

Then he got cancer, and that was really, really it for running.

At the behest of a therapist and my mom a few months after he died, I tried running again as a way to help deal with it. Instead it only reminded me how out-of-shape I was, and how I had peaked physically in kindergarten and that, above all, I would never really get the chance to run with him again. I would do it from time to time, but usually as a way to placate my mom than for any self-motivated reasons.

During my senior year of high school I was able to start running for myself. Something about the prospect of leaving all of those bad memories behind coupled with fact that, no matter what, my time in Panama City Beach was almost over. I lost a little weight, felt free for the first time ever, started seeing a girl on the weekends, blogged and expressed myself like a madman, etc etc.

My first few years at Rice saw running as a personalized expression of the come-and-go college workout fad. Running definitely wasn’t a regular thing, but I did it from time to time, and I still wore it like it was a big part of my life. In reality it had been a big part of my life, but it wasn’t at the time.

Then in late 2008 I started running a lot. Like, a lot a lot. And I don’t really remember why. At one point my girlfriend at the time had to sit me down and have a serious talk with me about how running twice-a-day in Houston, in the middle of the summer, with little shade around the perimeter of Hermann Park was probably a bad idea.

So I calmed down a bit but ran religiously until the beginning of my senior year of college. It was the best shape I’d been in to date, I could eat whatever I wanted without remorse, and I felt almost as free and confident as the day I left for college.

Now, let’s fast-forward in our story to about a year ago. That’s when my brother completed the Wine and Dine Half-Marathon by himself. At a point in my life when I was feeling less than capable of doing the bare minimum, he had been able to balance his courseload at UCF and train for a half-marathon and finish it. It was exactly the inspiration I needed-- a reminder that there’s potential in my genes-- to get me off my ass and back to pounding pavement.

~~~

So, about that race.

Where was I? Right. I was talking about the shortcomings of my training. Running on a treadmill can only take you so far.

It’s one thing to watch three back-to-back episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives while galloping in place three times a week. It’s one thing to do leg presses with an ear full of Stuff You Should Know. But this first half-marathon was over two hours spent inside my head, navigating a sea of sweaty strangers while facing down every doubt that popped into it.

That’s why I wasn’t prepared for that weird, lonely feeling that overcame me halfway through the race.

I was by myself. There was no one running alongside me to help me keep pace or compliment my form. There was no friend on the sidelines shouting, “go Kyle!” or “nice legs!” There was no girl to impress. No music or distraction to retreat into. I was alone.

And a short time later it hit me. I was doing a hard thing-- a good thing-- by myself, for myself. No distractions. No shortcuts. I was being selfish in the good way, where you do things for yourself because they’re good for you. Not the selfish I was used to, where you take things for yourself because they make you feel good.

As I mentioned earlier, I have felt truly free a few times in my life. Once was that stretch of time before college, when I was younger and felt the infinite possibilities before me. And another time was the last seven or so miles of my first half-marathon. I felt like my own person again, separated from the complex of validation I so often seek.

I kept moving. I smiled and appreciated the encouragement from the random people around me. I laughed at the characters and costumed runners around me. I cheered and pumped my hands up when random Disney songs would suddenly be blaring around me. I let loose.

In that last mile before the finish line, I couldn’t help but feel like the half-marathon was going to be a really cool turning point in my life. A point when I stop taking shortcuts and the means to getting where I want to be are just important as the end to which I’m trying to reach. A point when goals are real, and not just a consequence of a lifestyle I want to live. A point when I start living.

When I did finally cross the finish line, I laughed a little bit and thought to myself “so what’s next?”

We’ll see.