The best worst run

The more I get into running, the more I’ve to come to appreciate the sadistic side of it.

Case and point: zero part of me wanted to run the 5 miles I was scheduled to run this morning.

If you could put a megaphone to the flurry of thoughts running through my head while running, you would hear a combination of me trying to rationalize quitting — insisting that I deserve a break once and awhile — and whining like a two-year-old, screaming “I don’t wanna!”

Seconds felt like minutes; minutes felt like hours. You get the point.

But then it occurred to me, as it perhaps does with some runners, that in the grand scheme there are going to be far more challenging things in life that I am going to have to a suck up and power through.

So what would it say about my capacity to thrive, if I cannot even muster the mental and physical fortitude to power through this run?

Enter the sadism of running.

The point of runs on days like these is not joy, it’s to prove to ourselves that we can do hard things when we set our minds to it, and to also prove that we are not slaves to only being capable of accomplishing important things when motivation and mood, often like unpredictable gusts of wind, serendipitously strike.

Today, for me, it’s running. Maybe it’s running for you too, or maybe it’s some else you’ve been putting off.

Resistance, as running continues to teach me, isn’t necessarily a call to quit. Sometimes it’s a call to strengthen your resolve — something that you can increasingly and reliably depend on to accomplish important work.