And Nothing Hurt

More Running and Writing

Hi Friends,

I promise this won’t become a running newsletter. But unfortunately, any time I actually get myself out the door to run, no matter how slowly or infrequently, I want to talk about it. I’m one of those insufferable people. I’m sorry. I promise this is also about writing.

Weekend before last, I decided to run the loop at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, on a whim. For those who don’t know, it’s a 5k loop around the best park in all of NYC (sorry Central), with a killer hill at the end. Previous to this, when I picked up running for a bit a few months ago, I felt like I needed to build up to 5k again, as it’d been so long since I’d regularly run before that. But then Christmas hit, and the horribleness of January, February, and March (oh and then April and some of May happened ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and with the nicer weather, it’s been easier to get outside. Obviously I had not built up all the way to 5k, but I decided to just do the loop anyway. I could walk if I wanted.

And I did walk a little, but over all it felt great. I was slow but I do not give a fuck. I even ran the whole hill, which is my goal any time I run the loop, both to slay the dragon and get it over with faster. The endorphins lasted for ages and I was the right amount of sore the next day. It was amazing. I’ve gone for two more shorter runs since and I’m really enjoying it.

Here’s where it relates to writing, as promised. So in the first mile, which is always the worst mile for me, I started to worry about what was going to hurt, either immediately or later on. How were my knees doing? My back? Was I breathing too heavily? Should I slow down? Should I walk now? Or now? Or now? I was so busy worrying about what might start to hurt that I didn’t realize that nothing actually hurt in the moment. I mean, it didn’t feel like I was sitting on a cloud being fanned by cherubs and fed grapes, but I wasn’t in any abnormal pain, or really much of any pain at all. I was breathing fine, considering. My knees didn’t hurt. My back was fine. I was fine. Again, it wasn’t effortless, but it wasn’t painful. So I….stopped worrying about what pain I might feel in ten feet or half a mile or at the end. If something actually hurt, I could stop. I knew how to deal with any pain that might come the next day with water and stretching and Advil and I knew what to expect there, too, after doing this whole stop/start thing year after year. But it was a bit of a revelation I was could stop worrying about pain that hadn’t happened yet. It was eye opening to focus on how I was actually feeling in the moment, which was actually very good!, instead of trying to anticipate bad feelings or sensations. I guess that’s what they call being present? And mindfulness or something? Ugh, I hate it when they’re right.

I also do this when I write. I anticipate how hard it’s going to be, how hard it feels, the anxiety, the fear or doing it wrong or having to do it all over again later in edits. (Uh, you always have to do it all or partially all over again in edits so there’s no avoiding that.) I get so worked up about how it’s going to feel (i.e. bad and hard) that I don’t do it and things don’t get done, which makes me feel bad, and the cycle continues. Fun! (Not fun.) Next time I sit down to write, I’m going to try to remember what it felt like running, when I realized it didn’t actually hurt, and that if it did hurt, I would know what to do, or I could stop and take a break, and that I was fully in control of those feelings. I mean, it might actually work. I’ll probably have to do it a few (hundred) times before it becomes second nature, but well, that’s true for everything.

This is probably something someone told me along the way, that if you just let go and be present you’ll struggle less and find flow or whatever and everything will be easy and effortless. Well, that’s a lie because few things are easy and effortless. But they don’t have to be unnecessarily painful. I don’t have to make things unnecessarily painful myself. I just had to get out of my head, and out into the world, to figure out something pretty obvious, that (unfortunately) relates to a lot of little areas of my life. Me telling you this here right now might not help immediately, but maybe it’ll be a seed that’ll grow, and one day you’ll realize it yourself when you’re out in the world doing something with your body or your mind that’s not writing. At least I hope so.

Thanks for reading, friends. I hope you and yours are vaccinated and safe.

OXOXOX,

Kate