Running Toward the Future

A personal essay by Breanna Staten

A newly-converted long distance runner uses her endurance skills to cope with her husband's upcoming admittance into medical school.

White earmuffs. New tennis shoes. Two jackets layered up to stave off the chill. My resolve was as fragile as the ice crunching beneath my feet with every labored step. The top of the hill came slowly, slowly. That breathtaking view of Utah valley was veiled by my huffing, puffing breath.

Photo by Hunter Johnson on Unsplash

Whoever said, “You were born to run,” (Florence Griffith-Joyner, I think. Along with every motivational sports commercial ever) must have been at least a mild-mannered masochist. I wasn’t born to run. I was born to read for hours on end and eat grapes and goldfish all afternoon. As I reluctantly turned from that view to finish my run, I thought of the rest of Ms. Griffith-Joyner’s quote. “You were born to run. Maybe not that fast,” (like me), “maybe not as efficiently as others,” (also like me), “but to get up and move, to fire up that entire energy-producing, oxygen-delivering, bone-strengthening process we call running.”

As I descended that hell-born hill, my thoughts going thunk-thunk-thunk in time with my feet, I thought of a couple things that fueled me  just enough to keep going. At this point, I was over halfway done with the run. Thunk. Each run from now would feel easier than this one. Thunk. I never had to hike up this hill again if I didn’t want to. Thunk. The days would keep getting warmer from here on out, meaning earmuffs would soon be superfluous. Thunk. Most importantly, even if these had been the slowest two miles I had ever run in my life, I had done them. I had gotten up and run like I said I would have, and soon it would all be over. Celebratory thunk, thunk, thunk. After all, it was literally and metaphorically all downhill from here.

 So, I kept on running. After I got home, I made a plan. I pulled out my tired blue planner, my favorite purple pen, and began writing out a workout schedule that spanned 12 weeks. I picked a half marathon in May to train for, mostly so I couldn’t back out once things got hard. Within a month, I was running for regular workouts the most I had ever done in one sitting (6 miles). What’s more, I was doing it multiple times per week. Now, instead of my feet going thunk, thunk, thunk, my heart was going thump, thump, thump; first in nervous anticipation, then with painful effort as I actually did the workout.

Photo by Ryan DeHammer on Unsplash

Fast forward six weeks and I’m doing my first eight mile run. Despite my weeks of training, I still can only run comfortably at a 10-minute mile pace, so I’ve got about 80 minutes ahead of me of monotonous running on the treadmill. Sometimes I pass the time by watching the little green dot on the monitor inch it’s way around the track to show how far I’ve gone. It takes three blinks to move from one little bulb to the next. There are 12 bulbs in a quarter of the track, so 48 in a quarter mile, 192 in a mile, which means that there will be just over 1,500 bulbs filled during my run today. That’s about 4,600 blinks. Since my mind gets bored after watching that little green dot after about two minutes, I try to think about something else. Unfortunately, the thing my mind wanders to is the one thing I don’t want to think about--medical school. Not for me, though. For my husband.

My husband is going to start attending medical school in a year and a half. I can practice running. I can practice for my half marathon, but there is no way to practice something when one does not know what that “something” will even look like. In my case, that “something” is making the most of my relationship with my husband when he’s in the throws of med school. There is no way for me to physically practice that (that I know of, at least. If you know of a way, give me a call) so I do the next best thing—I try to put my fear into words.

I’ve hit the one mile mark at this point. I’ve gotten through all the fluff and the part where I tell myself, “This isn’t so bad,” and it’s starting to really sink in that I’m in this for the long haul today. I might as well hunker down and try to figure out this medical school thing. After an obligatory prayer to the Muses and a quick trip over to Archaic Delphi to bless my verbal expedition, I begin my adventure in attempted articulation.

Sadly, my venture does not even cross the proverbial Aegean Sea without immediately recognizing problems. Instead of being cursed by Neptune to wander for 10 years, I am cursed by the literary gods. One of the downsides of being an English major is that whether or not the intention is there, one is able to articulate one’s thoughts and worries and fears with terrifying accuracy and brutal imagery. As I pass the two mile mark, a memory flashes through my mind:

Photo by Mitchell Griest on Unsplash

 I am sitting in my car, a sturdy 2003 Honda CRV, reading an article to prepare myself for the loneliness that will come when my husband begins medical school. We had discussed it many times before and I always ended up assuring him, through my tears, that I would happily support him as best I could when the time came. Until that night, however, I had never really told him what emotions were swimming through my tears as they fell onto my too-big sweatshirt. (I wore it because I felt like I could hide in it like I was hiding from Anxiety herself.) Jared is finished with work now and he comes to join me in the car. The drive home is quiet.  Once we are parked in the parking stall outside our cheap student housing, I turn off the car but make no move to get out. He stays still, too. As we sit in the car—why do all big arguments happen in the car?—I finally blurted out, “Please, Jared, please do not ask me to be a widow for eight years! Don’t ask me to be alone while you disappear off to the inside of a classroom. Don’t make me do this by myself…”

The fabric of the steering wheel beneath my fingers was fraying.

I’ve passed mile three at this point. Mile four is hurting. I need to blow my nose and wipe the sweat from my face, and there’s a persistent stitch in my side that is taking my breath away.  I can feel a blister forming on the underside of my left foot where the arch is. Vaguely, I wonder how I’ll feel after the fourth year of Jared’s med school career. After the stitch in my side passes, my thoughts race back to that night in the car.

Even for me, my words had been strong. Yet, frustratingly, they were accurate. They captured my fear of loneliness (“When it comes down to it, who will he pick? Me, a needy, emotional wife, or an education that will enable him to save lives and get rich?), my resignation to that same loneliness (“God will give us compensatory strength and blessings to get through it, right? Right?”), and my fear about those upcoming years that had become my constant, cold-blooded companion, leeching away my hope and strength before the trial had even begun.

I had rested my head on the steering wheel and let the tears of a future emotional widow fall from my eyes, the eyes that so often masked pain with smiles and laughter because if people really knew what was going on inside my head, inside my heart, inside my soul, they would cry too. Perhaps I am melodramatic. Perhaps I am overly emotional. Perhaps I simply have the vocabulary to articulate the torturing terror that grips every spouse as they say goodbye to their newly accepted med school student who used to be their husband (or wife) and will not return, not really return, for the next eight years. This is the curse of the English major, which I defined during the fifth mile.

Photo by Arek Adeoye on Unsplash

As I begin mile six (my body is used to the motion by now and I can zone out more easily. I trust my feet to fall rhythmically on that long black tongue of track) I think about the curse that stops me from preparing for the future like I prepare for a race. Any mental or emotional stamina that I build up is broken down with rhetoric, syntax, and a dreadfully well-placed adjective.  Paragraphs and punctuation pepper the chassis around my heart with paralyzing fear. So, I build barricades around that beating organ, breathing in new courage as I begin my next run. I must keep running. Thoughts threaten to overthrow any sense of empathy, sympathy, running through my veins. So, I stare straight ahead, taking step after steady step, and feel sweat slide down the sides of my face.  I must keep hoping. I must keep running.

Mile seven is here. My breathing burns the inside of my lungs. I battle to keep it regulated, to keep it regular, to keep in control of my body. At the same time, the curse of the English major battles it out with the determination I have birthed through running. I feel those fires burn within me, too. Sometimes they are burning the sides of the ships I hoped would bring me home to safety, and other times they nearly engulf everything I had ever known. With the former, I put on my armor and beat the fire down, determined to maintain my hope. Thunk. With the latter, I carry my future and my past upon my shoulders and take cover, knowing that I am more than the walls I have built around my heart. Thunk. No matter what, though, I keep on living. Thunk. I keep on hoping. Thunk. I keep on running. Celebratory thunk-thunk-thunk.

Then, lo and behold, the moment came when I experienced the spiritual epitome of what it means to be a runner. It happened in the middle of the eighth and final mile. All of a sudden my pained breathing and thumping heart were no more. I felt like I was flying, like I was one of the Greek gods racing around the earth just for fun. I reveled in my god-like ability to go faster, faster, faster and not notice it. My strides lengthened, I threw my head back and let my hair flow divinely in the wind, and I found myself laughing.

Image credit: Photo by Hunter Johnson licensed by Unsplash; Photo by Ryan DeHamer licensed by Unsplash; Photo by Mitchell Griest licensed by Unsplash; Photo by Arek Adeoye licensed by Unsplash