Life Lessons from Sweat, Swat and Swear
One of my favorite podcasts is Florida Trail Runners. This podcast is how I heard about the Dunes 50K race I did in April, and also the Forgotten Florida race coming up in February. The host, Joseph Fuller, interviews people (usually in small groups) and has them tell stories from a recent race. The great thing is it’s a way to preview a race I’m interested in. If I hear “All that sand running was so hard!” or “This race was very wet” I get some clues about what I’m in for. The latest episode was about the Sweat, Swat and Swear 50K in Inverness, FL, north of Tampa (I love that name, although it doesn’t necessarily make me want to do this race, ha ha.) Joseph interviewed four runners who completed the race, and two of them had especially interesting stories. One woman shared that she’s a former addict, and got into running as part of her recovery. This seems to be a common theme among ultra runners- I would say about 25% of the runners I hear on these podcasts have transferred their drug or alcohol addiction to a running addiction. That’s okay! Running is a good thing to be addicted to. Anyway, before the race she dedicated each mile to a person in her life- someone she wanted to pray for, or someone who helped or inspired her, and one mile was dedicated to her dog (that was my favorite.) Then during the race she thought about each person during their mile. Joseph asked her how she made it through the final miles, and she said that after 30 miles dedicated to other people, the last mile was dedicated to herself. I LOVED THAT SO MUCH. She said she took that final mile to think about everything she had been through, and how far she had come in her life, and savored the fact that she was about to finish a 50K. Another woman told her story: about a year before the race, she had a strange pain in her neck. It was diagnosed as a malignant tumor in her cervical spine, which has to be one of the scariest things in the world. She had to have surgery to remove it, and they couldn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t be a quadriplegic. After an eight hour surgery, she woke up to find that she could move her entire body, but couldn’t feel anything below her neck. It took months of rehab but slowly the feeling came- mostly- back, and she decided to run a 50K. Since it was cancer, there’s no way to know if the tumor will come back, so she decided there was no time to waste. For all she knows, her time is very limited, and she knew if she wanted to run an ultra marathon, she had to do it NOW. These stories were important to me, because as adults, especially women, we’re always putting other people first. Our families, clients, coworkers, pets, and well, if you have kids, forget it- your life is no longer your own. Even now that my kids are older and can take care of themselves, I still feel guilty about being gone on a Sunday morning to do a long run. And I feel guilty asking for extra days off of work to go run a race. We all have time- but not that much time. Seize the day, dedicate some miles to yourself, and do it… now.