It's so much more than being the fastest.
I saw a quote on Instagram: "Train for a marathon and try to tell me how it didn't change your life..."
I'll be honest, fit fam. I haven't ever trained for one, so I can only imagine.
Imagine the early mornings and the late evening runs.
The dedicated Saturdays for the long hauls.
The black toe nails.
The watch tan lines.
The crankiness that comes with tapering...
Yea, I'd call that life changing, too.
The determination.
Perseverance.
Commitment.
Sacrifice.
Mental Toughness.
All lessons that you can carry through life.
And that...is why we race.
It may look like we're running for ourselves or for a charity or in the memory of a loved one. And we do...but we also run for something else.
Something much bigger.
We run for our community.
Our family.
Our mental sanity.
We run because we find life in the race.
Every time we toe the line is a new beginning. And every finish line we cross is another end. Every toe nail we lose is a right of passage. The hills we trudge up and the other sides we soar down...try and tell me that a race is NOT the perfect analogy to life.
Sometimes training runs or even races end in literal blood, sweat, and tears. Scrapped up knees and lost running spikes eaten by the shin-high mud on rain soaked trails-all of these we wear as badges of honor. Even the tears that come from runs that almost break us-or the reasons that almost broke us that have led us to a run. We take the time to recover and recoup; maybe even think about quitting for good. But after a hot shower and a deep sleep, we're ready (or almost ready) to tackle it again.
We find life in our races and our races add life to our days. We race together or solo, but we're never alone. We race for the challenge, the uphill fight, and the soaring victory on the downhill. We race to push ourselves further, harder, faster than we've ever done before. Because we feel alive at our limit. And we thrive when we push the boundaries of what we thought possible.
We race to expand our world. We race for ourselves to destroy our self-limitations. Or we race for those who can't anymore. We race in memory; we race in person.
But most importantly, we race together.
We run together.
We stand together.
We support each other.
Because we are runners.
Your turn, running fit fam. Tell me your life-changing run story. Was it a race that gave you that *light bulb* moment or was there a specific run that just turned your life around? Tell me below in the comments below. I have one particular story in mind I'll share if you'd like to hear it... :)
Run strong, fit fam,
Marie Whitt, PT, DPT //@dr.whitt.fit
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