The Upside of Shame

955 run/45 to go

...and I can't find my running shoes.

This is the dumbest problem I could possibly have right now. I have backups, sure, but there's a reason they are backups and not...front ups. I've run the past 30 or so miles in the backups and have a blister and my favorite socks have a hole in them and I have a cold and..and...poor, pitiful me.

Please, please read the sarcasm there.

I called a friend today. She had just completed her first round of chemotherapy a few hours earlier. By all accounts, she should have been laid up, in bed, her every whim tended to. This girl deserves the world. Instead, she was trying to run errands before the nausea hit full force. Anyway, I called to check on her and when she heard my cold ridden voice, just said

"Jesus Jenny, you sound like ass."

She, chemo coursing through her, several kids and a home to tend by herself, planning fundraisers for schools and ticking off the dinners she had made ahead pre-chemo - she sounded pretty damn great.

I don't tend to feel sorry for myself, and really all of the stupid missing-shoes-hole-in-socks-got-a-cold stuff doesn't get in the way of a run. It can't. There are so many ways to excuse myself from running, or to widen the scope - so many reasons to excuse ourselves from everything. Excusing myself from a run because of a cold would have kept me from the thing that was going to make me feel better. I was shivery and a little bit pissed off at the start, but that gave way within mere minutes to warmth and the familiar rhythm of breath and legs and arms loosening and working well.

I passed up drinks with friends so that I could run, and felt about 20 times better for having done it, but I can't say I would have done tonight's run were it not for the 1000 mile project and deadline looming. I have just 45 miles left now, could easily be done in 10 days or less, but honestly I'm a little scared of losing the motivating factor of this project's successful completion. I feel like my dad is about to take the training wheels off my bike.

I think a lot about what my next project will be, what will keep me moving ahead, reaching outside of my comfort zone? Shame works, or rather the avoidance of it. Maybe it doesn't sound like the healthiest, most proactive approach, but time and again, it's worked out well for me.

I attended the University of Mexico in Mexico City for a semester in college and once began what was to be a two week trip with a few good friends, on the cheap, during a school break. When I say on the cheap, I mean sleeping and eating in bus stations some nights, wearing clothes more dirty than clean and generally embracing my inner gypsy. The first several days went well, we all had energy and optimism to spare. My intrepid adventurer friend, Robyn, arranged for us to ride horses in one village several hours out to a semi-active volcano. We would then climb the volcano, celebrate, descend the ashy mountain, horseride back to our starting point, catch a bus and probably camp in some other bus station until it was time to ship off again.

The idea was a great one, in theory. And really, it was an extraordinary day. I did climb the volcano on that brilliantly clear blue day, I heard wind swooshed through a bird's wings as it flew nearly as high as I had climbed, I watched steam rise from the mouth of the crater and I saw the tips of buildings of an extinct village buried now a 100 years in the hardened lava of the last major eruption.

The problems arose when we began the hours long journey back. We had no water, our guides had brought us each one coke, we had no food, and sunscreen had never even been considered. The horses began acting up and if memory serves, at least one person got off their horse and just walked back. We had no idea when the rural bus would come pick us up. It was near midnight when we finally reached the train station, having shivered for at least an hour on a cold, dark, empty village road.

Robyn and the others immediately bought bus tickets to the next destination, a tiny beach town where they planned on sleeping in hammocks on the beach for a few days. I was badly sunburned, dehydrated beyond reason and, frankly, adventured out. I hemmed and hawed. Screw the hammock, I wanted to be comfortable again, I wanted my little room and my hot shower and my taco stand at home. So I walked to the ticket counter, bought my ticket back to Mexico city and instantly felt a hot blanket of shame. I knew I had every logical reason to beg off. I'd done plenty, I needed to take care of myself, quench my dehydration, heal my sunburn and home seemed a very good place to do that.

I began to walk toward my friends to say goodbye. But what had I done? Was I really that quitter? I turned around, ran back to the ticket counter and bought a new ticket to the beach town.

We slept the sleep of the dead on that bus. Someone busted out a credit card on arrival and the hammocks became a laughable memory. We checked into a hotel that had comfy beds and a pool bar that served sweet, icy drinks all day and all night. On our last night, I woke up after everyone had fallen asleep. I took my book, and sat on my tiny veranda under a thin puddle of yellow light and read for hours, the sound and smell of ocean all around me.

I held on with more pride to the discomforts I had risen above to arrive in that spot, and I read, memorably content, until the sun rose.

Be well,

Jenny