I Feel I Never Told You the Story of the Ghost

The reality of the marathon is beginning to solidify around me. I am in a Walk/Jog/Run class (how appropriate) with Clint Askins. Clint ran the White Rock Marathon in Dallas last year. If any of you know Clint, he is not a pudgy fellow, but he still could pack quite a punch if you were to irk him. Clint was an offensive linemen in high school, but began to lose weight once he came to college. He and I are de facto running partners in class, and afterwards we usually run a few more miles so we can talk.

When I talk to Clint about running, the topic of mechanics or form is rarely addressed. We do not talk about the "how" of running, but "why." As I wrote earlier this year, running is almost as much a mental event for me as it is physical. All my life I have known that I was not incredibly fast or big. I knew that I could not simply beat someone because of natural gifts. What I did recognize was that I could keep going longer than anyone. If it was just a matter of gritting my teeth, separating my body from the pain, and not caring how it looked, I could keep going. It was almost a Zen-type of experience when I was in middle school. I began to run track, and I discovered that if I went to this place outside of myself when I ran, I could press through that pain in my lungs, the lactic acid in my legs.

The dangerous part about that kind of experience is that it is pervasive. You cannot have that kind of thought process and only use it when you run. It becomes who you are. I began to look at hard experiences as one big suffer-fest. I did not revel in the pain, but I began to have a certain kind of detachment from the pain. I almost thought that it was wasteful to become attached to situations that brought me pain and doubt. Instead, I would view them with an objective eye for the problems and solutions.

In time, I began to long for the pain. Life is not meant to be a big test where you simply get all of the right answers. It is the process. Sometimes you have to mark the wrong answer on the Scantron, and then try to erase it so much that you rip the paper. The best days when I am running are not the ones where I glide along without feeling. They are the ones where I am fully engaged in what I am doing. All of it comes at me, and it all makes the experience worthwhile. The physical pain, the exaltation of the onrushing endorphins, the mental journeys, and the beauty of my surroundings.

Pain is beauty because sometimes it lets us know we are alive.