I’m Running My Own Race
I’m running my own race
I find the journey of motherhood to be so fascinating in that we are helping small humans through the most significant neurological growth period of their lives, while at the same time, we are basically creating a new identity of our own. Doesn’t that seem like a lot at one time?
What I found in my mindful journey is that in my new role as being all to everyone, I was blurring the line as to what I needed for me. OG me. I forgot that I didn’t have to always take everyone else’s needs and desires and put them in front of my own. Once in a while, it was OK (and healthy) to think about what I needed to feed my soul. For me, this is what I discovered:
I don’t want to run with you.
There I said it. I dislike running with my husband or anyone else for that matter. I like the idea of being a lone wolf, and when I was expected or asked to run with others, I loathed it. Why? Well, running is my time to get some exercise and clear my head. It is my time to refocus and figure things out. It’s a stress release, and when someone else is with me, I can’t get all the benefits my mind and soul need when I am trying to keep pace with someone else.
When it came to running with others, I always put on a happy face and did it anyway. And I always looked at other people running together and wondered how they did it so effortlessly. I get the logistics of why people do work out together. For me, it killed two birds with one stone. As a mom, you don’t get much time with your husband or friend, so getting both of those at once seems like an ideal multi-task. And I did like the companionship of someone being with you. Running with a partner seemed very easy for just about anyone else, so why couldn’t I do it?
My problem was that I kept setting my cadence and pace to someone else. My husband is like a jackrabbit, he gets all jazzed about running and starts off like a hare, running the first few miles at an almost sprint and then getting tired and slowing way down. I am more like the tortoise and believe a steady cadence and pace actually gives you a better time in the end. And for my races, I have seen I am way faster on the back end than when I start. I like the slow build, not a fast burn off.
My two besties are great runners with long strides and long legs. They are just naturally faster out of the gate and never slow down, they are former track stars, first-place finishers, running even with major leg injury kinda gals. I spent more time in the pool than on land when they were developing muscle memory for running and am short with a shorter stride. Trying to keep up with any one of these situations was frustrating and made me feel off my game. For years I would try to match their pace, try to keep up or in the case of my husband, sprint and then slow way down when I was just starting to feel my stride. It was exhausting. Then I had a life epiphany...
JUST RUN YOUR OWN DAMN RACE.
What if instead of trying to keep up, slow down, match stride, keep cadence with them, I just decided to run my best for me, no matter what?
A very simple concept, yet I was so used to trying to please everyone, I never stopped to consider what I wanted to do. My desire to become someone who morphed into the perfect running partner took way more precedent over me getting a good run in. It began to cause anxiety. What if my husband asked me to go for a run with him? Or my friends and I went on vacation and wanted to take a run together? What would I say? I would start formulating excuses as soon as I got up in the morning so I could just go by myself later.
It was ludicrous. It was, after all, just a run. A run that no one else meant to be stressful - quite the contrary.
However, how many times in our lives do we try to conform to how we think we need to do things or be things instead of just worrying about running our own damn race? Think my running problem is silly? Have you ever stood in front of a closet and wondered what to wear because of who was going to be there instead of what would make you feel like you? Almost everyone has done it at some time. And when we don’t run our own damn race, we are never going to feel like ourselves. This means we’re not ever completely happy with our lives because when we set our sights on someone’s ideas or goals or abilities, we create unattainable situations.
And it takes a trained, mindful eye to spot that you are doing it, especially if you tend to be a person pleaser. Taking care of others is compassionate, however, changing who you are or what you do to meet their goals instead of your own is damaging to everyone involved. It teaches everyone to lose synchronicity with who they are.
So, when I took a hot, mindful minute to become more self-aware and ask myself why I hated running with anyone else, I discovered that it had nothing to do with others. It was that I had to stand in my own truth and run my own race the way that was best for me, even if that meant opening my mouth before a run and stating my intention to the people I am running beside.
Just because I changed how I did things did not mean I expected anyone else to change how they did things, or conform to how I was going to run. That also would have created an issue. We all just needed to be on the same page with our intentions. I also realized that by mindful stating my intention, it freed me to relax. I realized that my intentions might change from run to run, but the race is always still my own.
This year on vacation, my husband and I ran together often. He still runs like a crazy jackrabbit out of the box, but I no longer feel the need to try to keep up with his frantic energy, and we are both OK with that. I do my thing, and he does his. About halfway through the run, we fall into sync with our pace and cadence naturally because I am no longer trying to match his pace and he isn’t trying to match mine. And yet, when I let go of trying to keep up, it all fell into place.
When I decided to let go of trying to please others every moment of the day and become mindfully self-aware of what I needed, everything clicked.
You should try it.