Scraping Away the Calluses

It's summer, and that means it's time to start updating Calluses again.

It's going to be difficult, seeing as how I'm finally scraping off the calluses I have, literally and figuratively. (Reading back over that, it sounds a little grosser than it did in my head.)

For eight years I have competed on the cross country and track teams at Warrior Run High School and Bloomsburg University, and on Saturday, May 9, I ran my last scholastic race. It was a depressing race, and a disappointing end to a disappointing career. As you can see, I changed my banner subheading from "seven years worth and counting" to "eights year worth. Could this be the end?" Since May 9, I have run once, and it was a mile long.

I like not running. Right now, I like not running. I do hope it is just for now.

I'm waiting to start missing it, and I think I do a little bit, but if I start running again, it has to mean something different to me than it has these past eight years.

Not that running hasn't been evolving for me all along. As a young high school runner, I was bent on being the best. I showed a lot of promise at that age, qualifying for the state cross country meet my freshman year, and I felt I wouldn't be a truly successful runner until I was "the best." What that meant at that time was becoming state champ by my senior year.

If you know me, you know I always fell depressingly short of that goal. By my senior year of track, I was a bit more mature, and success for me was defined a little differently. It had to be, seeing as how I broke my ankle at the beginning of the season, and by the end of the season, I was just lucky to be running. Making podium at districts that year, in a time that was probably a good two minutes from even qualifying for states, was success.

My definition of success evolved even more in college. Again, it had to if I was going to find a reason to stick with the sport. I was injured, sick, and ill-trained most of the time, and although I started at Bloom knowing I had a sub-18 minute 5K, all-American status, and a national qualification in me, I began to feel victorious when I simply finished a race, was on the varsity team, or came close to all-Region.

I wrote about my "must-be-the-best" complex in The Runner's Gazette last summer, and the process of growing out of that phase. I wrote:
"It's cliche, but it's absolutely right that the truest form of success in running is to know that we've done our best, even when our best seems insignificant because some else's 'best' was better. We all have limits that are out of our own control. These limits are different from person to person, which means comparing ourselves against them is an unfair measure of success."

I wrote this going into my senior year of college. Looking back, I think I wrote these words to excuse what was basically seven years of never reaching my goals, and maybe to deceive myself about how important this last year of running was to me - my last year to achieve those goals.

That's probably it. If I achieved just one, magnificent goal in my final year, then those seven years of disappointment wouldn't be for nothing, and I probably knew that last summer.

I was creating my emotional cushion. The emotional calluses were already falling off.

Last night, I took a pumice stone to my calluses. In eight years, I haven't had feeling in my big toe. It's nice to have it now.

I hope I run again, but I need it to be different. Although I wrote those words last summer, I knew I still wanted redemption. I have to not care anymore about those lost goals and missed opportunities, and then I can run again.