Drop it and Run

The ground scraped against my arms and hands like sandpaper on already raw skin. To make matters worse, the ground beneath me burned my skin like a pan just pulled from the oven. I was done. I had had enough. Nothing I did worked and I always fell—a failure. There was no getting up this time. I couldn't bring myself to stand and try once more.

Running was a passion, as were many other things, but each time I finally got a rhythm down, my feet would intertwine and I would fall. I tried varying the pattern with the same result. I tied items to my legs to force my feet to stay apart, but with the same result.

For years I had been able to run with no problems. Two years ago I had been able to run a half marathon with my friend Katrina. It was our final run together, because a few months later she was hit while on a morning run. Days after, my feet refused to work. My ability to run long distances without ever falling was gone. As I lay there, arms and hands bleeding, my body cooking on the hot cement, and Katrina's golden retriever, Sunshine, waiting for me, the tears I had held back for so long finally came.

Each tear cooled my heated cheeks, but evaporated as soon as they hit the sidewalk. Had I not been on a neighborhood street, where everyone was already gone for work or school, I would have felt even worse than I did.

I'm pathetic! Twenty-five years old and crying on the sidewalk because I can't run anymore. Why can't I run?!

Sunshine stuck her nose in my face then sniffed my ear. The air coming from her nose tickled and I looked at her.

"You want me to get up?" I asked, turning to look at her a little more.

She licked my face and no matter how many times I pushed her away she kept coming back. She wouldn't stop until I stood. With blood slowly running down my arms and the sidewalk searing my bloody hands, I finally stood. Dumb Sunshine, I'm done running. Still, I guess I couldn't lie on the sidewalk all day. I was done running, but I guess I was too stupid to stop trying since I kept it up for two years after Katrina's death. I hated the morning she died.

Katrina had only lived a few blocks from me and we would often meet halfway before we ran together. Sunshine came along some days. That morning had not been one of them. I left promptly at 5:55 AM so I could meet with Katrina at 6 AM. But as I turned the last corner, I saw her lying in the road with a frantic driver kneeling next to her.

"Katrina!" I yelled.

The driver looked startled as I ran up to them. "I'm so sorry," they said. "I didn't..."

"Katrina?" I asked.

She was unconscious.

"I'm s...," the driver started to say.

"Have you called an ambulance?"

"No, I..."

"Do you have a cell phone?"'

"Here."

I snatched it from their hand and called 9-1-1.

Sunshine brought me from my thoughts. My hand was in her mouth and she pulled on it. I had often see her do this to Katrina when we were just standing and talking.

"All right, Sunshine. You're so impatient."

I didn't leave the house for several days. Instead I walked on the treadmill at a fast speed, letting the music from Mortal Combat rattle the paintings I had hanging on the walls. Occasionally, I could get up to a jog before my feet started to fumble and I went back to a walk so I didn't fall. Sunshine ran from the door to the treadmill wanting to run outside, but I was done. I would keep exercising, but I was done running.

You're afraid.

"What?" I asked aloud, stopping the treadmill to see who had spoken.

Sunshine dropped a slobbery ball on the belt of the treadmill.

"Sunshine is someone here?"

She sat and wagged her tail in anticipation.

You're afraid.

"Katrina?"

My thoughts raced back to her hospital room. There had been enough damage that she needed help to breathe. I sat by her side until evening. During that whole time, she woke once.

"Whatever it is you fear," she said.

"...drop it out of mind,... and run the race," I finished.

Then her heart monitor flat lined and Katrina was gone.

The last words she spoke to me, were the words I had told her the first time I met her. We had been stretching one last time before the 2004 Salt Lake Classic began. She had confided in me that she was a little nervous. Why I said what I did, I don't know. I wasn't expecting to see her again. Then we had met again a few days after the race while on a morning run.

"Whatever it is you fear," she said, when she saw me.

"Drop it out of mind,... and run the race," I replied.

After that we started running together each morning. Sunshine came along every other day. Each morning that had been our greeting.

But, this wasn't about fear. My feet stopped working. They were the ones that had given up on running. It was only a matter of time before I agreed. I stared at the front room rug. It was a spiral rug of many colors and oddly tied in with the white walls, the dark green couch, the blue carpet, and the various colored flowers I kept around the room. It was my visualization rug. The rug where I ran the races in my mind before I ran them physically.

Moving to its center, I sat. It had been a while since I had sat on this rug. Sunshine climbed in my lap and lay there. Closing my eyes, I pictured the starting line of the Salt Lake Classic Half Marathon. Many people surrounded me, but I was one of many nameless faces in the crowd. I was okay with that. The signal was given and the race began. My steps landed solidly as I started forward. The air around me was cool and crisp as the sun was just beginning to rise. Birds sang to one another as they flew overhead. Businesses and houses passed and very few marathoners kept my stride. The early morning silence was only broken by the steady sound of my feet as they struck true.

I fell and found myself removed from the race and sitting back in my front room, with Sunshine still lying in my lap. Why did I fall? There were no obstacles, no sudden changes around me. After a moment's thought, I closed my eyes again and picked up the race just steps before I fell, just as I had on many of my runs. My rhythm remained true and I didn't fall where I had before. Every step was right and my feet stayed apart. Then I fell again. This time I kept myself in the race. I backed up a few steps and started once more. My attention was less on my feet now and more on the scenery around me. Was there something by me that caused me to fall?

As I studied my surroundings, I realized the sun was not rising. It should have been peeking over the mountain tops by now. I sensed fear in every shadow and the sun was refusing to rise and burn them away. That is what I had really told Katrina.

Whatever it is you fear, drop it out of mind, into the shadows, and run the race. Because as the sun rises, the fear will be burned up with the shadows.

Those words had helped Katrina that day, but why could I not find that same help in them now? Leaving my visualization rug, I walked down the hall where I had hung several posters of things I wanted to do: places I wanted to see, things I wished to experience. As I passed the final poster, one picture caught my eye. It was of Katrina and me. She hadn't liked the picture much, and underneath it she had written.

Always running with you, even when we're not together.

"Is it you, Katrina?" I asked the poster. "Are you the one tripping me up?"

The photo didn't respond.

I continued to stare at the picture and memories of our races together came back to me. Why it was that I picked up what I did I'll never know. As the races replayed, Katrina and I changed the pace at which we ran at specific intervals. As I compared these races to my earlier visualization, I could see that the places where we had changed our pace was where I kept falling. I was trying to run the race at one speed, like a hamster in a wheel—always running, but never going anywhere.

Returning to my visualization rug, I began again. The first change was at 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles); then 12 kilometers (seven miles); then 16 kilometers (ten miles). With each successive change my feet remained true, never coming together like tango dancers on the dance floor. At first those changes had been unconscious, just something I did naturally. It wasn't until after our first race together that Katrina had brought it to my attention. I wondered, now, if I could make those changes become unconscious habits once more. It was one thing to be able to visualize it, but another to actually run it.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I left the house, Sunshine ahead of me, into the bright afternoon sun and ran. I started down the street, taking the same path I did as I ran. As I approached the spot where I had fallen days before, (1.5 miles) I slowed my pace slightly. I didn't stumble, I didn't fall. So far so good. A few cars passed me as I continued to run. As I approached the seven mile switch, I remembered that this one was faster. However, I miscounted the final steps and I fell. The sidewalk was hot, but it didn't burn half as much as it had the morning I had given up.

Getting to my feet, I backed up several feet so I could make sure I got the change right. I did and continued on to the mile ten change. The last switch was the fastest, but again my count was off and I fell, twisting my ankle in the process. The sharpest pain I had felt radiated through my leg and into my foot as I rolled onto the grass. This was pathetic. No, I was pathetic. I had formed a new habit, replacing the one that had helped me most.

All of those years of self-discipline and training had been thrown out the window and brought me to my miserable present. It was fear. It was fear that made me fall, not my feet. It was fear that I would die like Katrina had that had caused my feet to intertwine. Fear that tried to keep me down so such thoughts could not come to fruition. Even now it tried to keep me down. A sprained ankle would keep me from running physically for a while, but it wouldn't stop me from getting the pattern corrected in my mind before I tried again.

Whatever it is you fear, drop it out of mind, into the shadows, and run the race. Because as the sun rises, the fear will be burned up with the shadows.