Say what you want to say, and let the words fall out, honestly.

So this is the week that I should be packing my tiara and tutu and getting ready to cross the Disney Princess Half Marathon off my bucket list.  And I’m not doing it.  It would have been easy for me to slink off and not ever post to the See How She Runs blog again, but one of the goals of this whole exercise was to be more authentic and open about things that I was not very open or authentic about.

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  I write when I’m running, and you may notice that I haven’t posted anything since November.  I think I did one more long run after the Buddy’s Race Against Cancer and then packed it in.  I’m disappointed in myself, not because I didn’t achieve my goal of running in the half marathon, but because I “quit” so far into the race.  I ran regularly from January through November, ELEVEN WHOLE MONTHS.

I’m also frustrated because this was supposed to be an exercise in “letting go and letting God.”  My runs may have been slow time-wise, but they were very enriching spiritually.  I spent a lot of time talking to God, telling him that I trusted him to play his part in making this happen, and I really believed that it would, until I decided I knew better than God what I was capable of.

And why am I having trouble starting up again?  I go back to the Theodore Roosevelt quote about the man in the arena (the focus of Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly): 

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I’m disappointed in myself for getting out of the arena because I dared greatly for a time and then quit, returning to join the cold and timid souls out of the game.  But this is a critical place to be right now, one that can teach me a lot about myself.  The place outside the arena initially feels safe but soon starts to smother me in ennui, triggering a downward spiral of shame and unworthiness.  Exciting challenges await inside the arena, but can have a tendency to result in sensory overload for me which is probably what sent me running for the exit.

I suspect I fall in the middle of the introvert/extrovert continuum and haven’t learned how to successfully sustain each side.  So life-wise, my goal is to find a way for the introverted part of me to recharge while in the midst of the dust, sweat and blood of the arena, while continuing to challenge the extroverted Elizabeth who dares greatly.   Another goal is to again “let go and let God.”  I knew he was with me the first time around, now I know what happens when I try to wrestle back control from the Almighty. 

As far as running goes, I have some pretty clearly defined goals as well.  It was interesting that as I added distance, my pace pretty much remained the same.  It was a slow pace that did not meet the requirement for finishing the Disney Princess Half Marathon, but the beginning, middle and end of my long runs were very similar.  My first time around on this half-marathon journey, I thought it would be possible to increase speed and distance at the same time.  Now I see that this isn’t how it works for me and I can spend the next few months working on speed knowing that it is the more challenging aspect of training.

Sunday  morning will be bittersweet because I had this vision of crossing the finish line and it won’t happen as I thought it would.  That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen eventually!