Lately I’ve been feeling off kilter, like my body is holding on to some tension that is asking to be let go. My nightly recovery score from WHOOP has also been letting me know something isn’t right for over a month. I noticed a decline in my sleep performance back in October after I had my bad fall. My ribs no longer hurt but solid sleep has been elusive for far too long, and I’m pretty serious about my sleep. Last night, in an attempt to get my mind and body in the right space before bed, I pulled out my gratitude journal. Of course there was no pen in it, which led me to start searching through my bedside table. I like to think of my bedside table as a junk drawer of memories. From preschool mementos from the girls, to handwritten cards from my old students, to dinner menus from restaurants dating 10 years back - this is the place I go whenever I want to remember. Last night, in my effort to find a pen, which I never did, I instead found one of my many random notebooks. I love finding these notebooks throughout the house - they are glimpses into my past with memories I have long forgotten, along with random grocery lists, to do lists, and drawings from the kids. These notebooks are never completely filled but I treasure them dearly.
I abandoned my search for a pen, and instead decided to read through my notebook just to see where my head was back in 2019. At the time, I was reading Todd Herman’s book, The Alter Ego, I had a list of summer projects that is still only halfway completed, my grocery lists were the same back then as they are today, and a man named Kevin approached me to ask if I would buy him Chinese food, which I didn’t and later regretted. I also found my race plan from back in 2019 when I ran the RDC Marathon. Back then, my goal was to run 3:17:XX. I had written out a plan for both a 3:17 and a 3:15 finish time (just in case), detailing how I would approach each section of the race, and the mantras I would use along the way. When I turned the page, I had written Know Your Whys and listed 6 reasons why I was reaching for this goal. Here is what I wrote:
To test my limits and find them
For Theia and Lexa, to show them hard things are possible
For my 18 year old self who could barely run a mile
For my future self who will know more and do more because she knows she can
To learn how to suffer, because life is suffering
Because I AM La Maquina and I know I can do this
(*Side note: La Maquina is my alter ego name and it is a name my friends would call me back in grad school when I would salsa dance all night long and still wake up on time to teach an 8am class. It means The Machine.)
As I sat there reading this, and rereading it, I became overwhelmed with emotion. The line that hit me the hardest: For my 18 year old self who could barely run a mile. The memories of that summer when I first put on a pair of running shoes and barely made it half a mile before I needed to walk, the feeling of less than every time we had to run a mile in school, the mental pictures of me as the chubby kid in elementary school, the narrative I am not an athletic kid, all came back to me. It hurt and I just wanted to take my younger self and hug her. I can still feel all of those thoughts and stories swirling in my head, and yet I’ve come so far. Somewhere along the way, I decided to do something different. To take one step towards changing my narrative. It didn’t happen overnight, but at some point I decided that I get to choose. When I think back to my 8 year old self, running around the track at Hucksansbury Park, only to earn a yellow sticker in the Presidential Fitness Challenge, I want to look her in the eyes and tell her it’s okay. Her value as a person isn’t wrapped up in any of this and she has the power to create any life she wants. The defeat that I felt in those moments as a kid, still sits with me somewhere. But as I took time to shed a few tears last night, that feeling of defeat slowly began to turn into pride. Never, ever, would I have imagined myself a distance runner, let alone a somewhat fast one. And that young girl who struggled with side stitches as she tried to run a mile, got me here. I am so proud of her.
Last night I had a glorious night of sleep and my WHOOP agreed.