I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’m not a young man anymore.
I think it’s only natural to lament the passing of time, the sands of the hourglass slipping through one’s fingers as the pages fall from the calendar.
Spring gives way to Summer.
Summer to Autumn.
Days become shorter. Nights grow colder.
Are we predestined to lose our energetic youth?
Is the struggle against Father Time an exercise in futility?
By the time we start to figure things out, our bodies begin to fail us.
Certain moments in our lives are frozen in time. I remember two years ago about this time, my doctor telling me it was time to think about giving up distance running as I entered a new phase of life.
I planned to run ten miles this morning as I ramp up in preparation for November’s marathon. I’ve got one more in me.
But the morning rain never tapered off. The little voice in my head said “You don’t want to run in this rain. Skip it. Do it tomorrow instead.”
Then the other, more powerful voice said “You can do this. You WILL do this. Get out there and do what you can. Something is better than nothing. Just go out and run.”
I made it the first two miles and one AirPod died. That’s ok, I thought, I’ll push forward and run at least six miles. Six miles is pretty good.
Then I thought to myself, if you’ve run six miles, surely you can run eight miles. I ran eight miles last Saturday. I can do the same with one AirPod.
So I ran eight miles.
Then I thought to myself, you’ve already run eight miles in this crap. If you push through and run your ten miles, you’ll remember this run when things get hard. When you feel like you’ve got nothing left in the tank, you’ll remember you kept going.
The little voice says “You can’t. Not today.”
The more powerful voice says “Get behind me, Satan. I can do this all day.”