In the Slush

If the worst thing that happens in your day is a bad run, you are a pretty damned lucky individual.  You are fortunate that:  a) You are physically able to put one foot in front of the other, b) Your life schedule has allowed you the precious time to do so, c) You had the motivation and mental fortitude to get out there and go.

Today was my first training run for the Buffalo Marathon on May 25.  It will be my sixth marathon, and I have had plenty of disappointing runs over the years.  This morning was one of those instances, not because of sore hamstrings or biting wind, but because my GPS watch fell off of my heavily-layered wrist and is entombed (crushed by a tire or frozen intact) in a dirty snow pile somewhere on a half-mile stretch of Elmwood Avenue. 

That loss, however annoying, provided the setting for personal growth this morning.

After I had completed two scans of the strip of road where my watch must have fallen with no luck, I started pointlessly looking under parked cars in the single-digit air, tears streaming down my frozen cheeks, when Leon popped into my mind.  Leon was a good friend, a high school buddy of my husband, who died nearly six years ago from injuries he suffered in a snowboarding accident.  Although I am blinking away tears at that memory as I type, his life gives me perspective.  Leon was one of those people everybody loved.  He was fun and free-spirited, unassuming and unequivocally friendly.  He was tall and strong, a natural athlete, and he enjoyed running.  I never knew him to train, but he could sign up for a local 8k and knock off 7-minute miles, smiling and listening to music.  We'd drink beer afterward in the crisp March air and that was it; that kind of running made him happy.  And it made us happy to be around him.  If Leon had used a GPS and then dropped it in the slush, I am 150% certain that he would not have been crying in the road, secretly wishing the poor old guy shoveling the business walkways would help him find it.  He would have looked, let it be, and moved on, happy to still have his legs and his tunes, and decided he wasn't really a mile-tracker or pace-keeper anyway.

I cried again later in the shower, not about my misfortune, but because I was ashamed of having broken down on a pre-dawn run that I was so fortunate to have taken.  I wanted to be more like Leon, and I found and cleared the energy blockage and belief that caused me to react to a material loss with tears instead of steadfastness.  Am I pissed that my 9-month-old GPS is gone?  A little, but like an with untied shoelace, I can coil up the emotional loose ends and carry on.  And Leon, thanks for showing up on a cold January morning for a run.