Find Your Pace, Find Your Peace.

One of the intriguing things about life, broadly construed, is momentum.  Sometimes, you can be pressing onward at a snail's pace, feeling heavy as a concrete slab.  Other times, things seem to moving along like a windswept parachute, pulled quickly off the ground and far afield.  The momentum may seem like it's random, and like you have no control over it, but I'm not so sure that that's the case.  For the past week, I have been quite busy, for the first time in recent memory.  I have had interviews at various possible employers, taken tests at a staffing agency, run into interesting research projects on the academic side of things, started taking steps to possibly move into a house with the woman of my dreams, and sorting out my future.  Were I not newly in the habit of pushing myself to keep going, I'm not so sure that I'd be up for all of it.  But lately, I've been pushing myself to keep moving; not moving senselessly and merely to stay moving, but to keep plowing through the tough terrain that is working to achieve my goals.  I am also not moving mindlessly, trying not to deal with my feelings and thoughts that make my present moment, for that would be more dangerous than even sitting still.  Rather, I am striking the balance between barely moving and thoughtlessly speeding along with no presence of mind.  Allow me to make one more analogy in regards to running (that is, after all, a main theme in this blog, is it not?)

Imagine the mind and the body as two running partners.  They're unwillingly tied to each other, need one another to do their best, but their tragedy is that they are so unevenly matched.  The mind has the ability to keep on running faster and farther into the future, into uncharted possible futures, and quickly as far backward into a cloudy past.  But the body can only run forward at the pace of the present moment, and unfortunately, it has to do so at the mercy of its reluctant partner, the mind, and its volatile changes of pace.

When I first started running, I wanted so much more than I could do in one session.  I wanted to be able to run at an 8 minute mile pace, I wanted to go on for 5 and 10 miles in one fell swoop.  In short, my mind took off at breakneck pace, and my body was left in the dust.  But at some point, I stopped thinking that I had to one day run a marathon--my mind slowed down a bit--or even that I'd have to run a half-marathon--slower--or a 20k--slower--or whatever large race toward which I was moving.  I forgot also that I had to run the 4 miles that I set out to when I left the house this morning--slower--and furthermore that I had to make it up the hill in front of me to get to the comfortable slight decline of the next road--slower.  In reality, all I had to do was take the next step, because that's all that I have to do right now--slower.  It was at that moment that my mind matched the pace of my body.  Perhaps the mind realized that ultimately, even if he crossed the finish line long before his partner, he'd still have to stand there and wait for him, twiddling his thumbs the whole time with that limitless nervous energy that the mind seems to posses. With my mind now matching pace with my body, I rounded out the four miles charted for today without stopping, and even managed to help two old ladies find the detour to the main road.

So while momentum is a very real phenomenon that pervades the experience of living life, the supposition that it comes and goes involuntarily is quite unfounded.  While you or your significant other may not actually run, your mind almost certainly does, at various paces, which rarely match that of your body.  But if you can manage to sync the two, and harness the power of the teamwork that happens when the two run at a complimentary pace, well you just might find real happiness.  But then again, what do I know?  I'm crazy enough to think that running a marathon will be fun.

Numbers:  I ran 4 miles today, after doing a big run of 6 miles on Monday (the record to date).  The times of both had me running at a pace of between 8:30 and 8:45 per mile (which I hope to improve by including speedwork in the regimen).  That brings the week's total to 10 miles, which I hope to increase to 13 or more, depending on how sore I am tomorrow.