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I’m halfway through marathon training. Everything hurts, especially my lower back. (Why didn’t I try this at 28 instead of 48?)
But my heart has never felt better.
I shared a few weeks ago that I started down this road with a complicated relationship to running — envious of people who excelled at it, a little resentful that I didn’t have what they appeared to have: freedom, time, strong hearts. Viral meningitis in 2011 and a severe COVID-19 infection in 2020 did a double-whammy on mine.
But some of those limitations were a story I was telling myself, and I didn’t like how it was unfolding. Cardiologists had cleared me to resume normal activity after both viruses, after all. And freedom and time — well, I’d find them.
So here we are: less than two months from the Chicago marathon, a little more than a month from the half marathon, which I decided to run as a dress rehearsal at the prompting of my running group leader.
I have a watch that tells me my heart rate and heart rate variability status throughout the day — running, recovering, resting. So far so good.
But that’s not really what I mean about my heart.
This process has brought me moments of clarity and beauty and humanity I’ll never forget.
Running past the Ohio Street Beach one Saturday morning as a group of Amish friends gathered to watch the sunrise alongside the morning kayakers and the triathletes-in-training and the stragglers slowly making their way home from a maybe epic, maybe regrettable Friday night. A love letter to Chicago, that scene.
One of our running group members showing up for Week 10 training and telling us he just proposed to his girlfriend on her birthday. (She said yes.)
Running past a friend one morning and him yelling back at me, to my sheer and utter delight: “Oh! We’re having a baby girl!” (Have you ever cried while you’re running?)
Your notes. So many of you have written to share what running has meant to you, has done for you, has changed in you. Such an unexpected gift.
A 66-year-old reader in Pennsylvania wrote to say he found a little extra motivation — and grace — after reading that training for this race is actually teaching me to slow down.
“This morning it took me 36 minutes and 23 seconds to run three miles and I have you to thank,” he wrote. “Turns out my age is just teaching me how to age.”
I have notes about loss. Notes about enduring. Notes about searching, endlessly, faithfully, for a fresh start.
Steve Moore, an American Foundation for Suicide Prevention board member and the captain of the organization’s marathon race team, shared my first marathon column with his team. The ensuing notes were brave and gorgeous and humbling.
And then this:
Last week, as my training group and I were finishing the last of 12 miles, one of the more seasoned runners was telling me a story about struggling with the final moments of a previous marathon — his knees, I think. He was wincing in pain, he said, when he overheard a spectator say something to the effect of, “That’s why I’ll never run a marathon.”
It didn’t sit well with him, and a few moments later the universe helped me understand why.
We were running by the soccer fields in Lincoln Park and I watched a man struggling with a toddler — his son, maybe — who clearly didn’t want to stop what he was doing. The man gently persisted and, eventually, picked him up and carried him away on his shoulders.
I imagined what it would feel like, in that moment, for the man to overhear a passerby say, “That’s why I’ll never have kids.”
Your struggle makes you look like a sucker, is how that sounds. You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble, is how that sounds. This is all a little foolish, is how that sounds.
I thought about all the times I’ve acted dismissive when what I really am is intimidated. I thought about all the times I made a joke when I should have made it clear that I’m truly, wildly impressed. I thought about how everything really worthwhile is also really hard.
I thought about pausing and contemplating, hard, before I say, “I would never …” again. In front of anything.
We all bring such different aches and pains and plans and promises to whatever we’re doing. Who are we to judge someone else’s path? How much better to just applaud?
Running has always struck me as a solo pursuit. I was nervous about the group training: What would we talk about? How would I measure up? What if everyone else was better/faster/younger/healthier?
What I’m discovering, over and over, is the wonder of a group — some running, some walking, some sitting to watch the sunrise — who exist on all these different paths. And then for a few fleeting moments we share one path — metaphorical and actual. It’s beautiful.
And that’s what I mean about my heart. Stronger than ever.
Join the Heidi Stevens Balancing Act Facebook group, where she continues the conversation around her columns and hosts occasional live chats.
Twitter @heidistevens13
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