On Racing and Pacing

(Photo by Julia Raasch on Unsplash)

"Learn to love pacing yourself, Jessie," he wrote.

My friend was responding to the news about my car accident and my frustration with incremental improvements on this journey of healing. We've talked about this before. One step at a time is how he thru-hiked the 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail, and it's how I've made every bit of progress in the last several years.

That doesn't mean I like it, though.

I've never been good at pacing myself, and I've never really enjoyed running long distances. Seriously, don't make me do the slow shuffle-jog. I would rather speed walk than do the slow shuffle-jog. At least if I'm speed walking, I feel like I'm getting somewhere. I mean, speed walking is kind of my normal pace. It stems from spending my childhood trying to keep up with the gate of my long-legged, fast walking, six-foot-tall father and a propensity for tardiness. I was often running late, so I ran to catch the bus and speed walked to class.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot how to saunter.

To this day, I have trouble walking with other people unless we link arms or hold hands because I am forever walking too fast - even when I try to walk slowly. As I was training for the West Highland Way, I was always trying to fit in 8+ mile hikes in the few hours between getting off work and the sun setting, so I pushed on as fast as I reasonably could (even trail-running at times), rarely stopping to enjoy the view or bask in the wonder of the woods. 

When I was a child, I dearly enjoyed going on hikes as a family. I never cared how many miles we hiked or how fast we hiked those miles. I didn't stick my head down until we reached the destination.

What happened?

I suppose you could say I grew up - that I couldn't stay in Neverland forever. I think it would be more accurate, though, to say that, in the process of shouldering adult responsibilities (yes, some of them far too soon), I forgot how to play. During the years of survival, there never seemed to be enough time to do all of the necessary things, let alone do things for fun. I've still managed vacations, of course, and fun things with friends here and there, but there is no regular time in my schedule for play. I work a job, several jobs in fact, but when I come home from work I don't relax and spend the evening doing something I enjoy for the pure purpose of enjoying myself. No, when I come home, I see the clean laundry piled on my bed, my sheets that haven't been washed in two months, the wood floor that hasn't been washed in over a year, and the plants that need to be watered. I think about the things I need to do to build my platform as an author, my schedule for the three jobs I'm trying to maintain, and perhaps a few friends I haven't seen in a while that I should contact to make plans. 

Thus, the hamster wheel continues to spin.

I can't seem to halt the anxiety crawling my insides, so my outsides can't stop either. I'm forever behind, running to catch up, but actually running on a treadmill. I'm exhausting myself in the name of "getting ahead", while I never seem to cross anything off the to do list that won't pop back up in a week or two. I try to let myself off the hook by throwing away the to do list, but it remains inscribed across my mind. When I pause, I think of all the items on it like balls in the air; I know I can't manage this many. This is not the first time I've been here, but I don't know how to slow it all down. When I become desperate enough, I will let a few balls drop. Some are made of porcelain, so they are crushed to pieces by the impact. Others, I find are rubber, and bounce back into the air without my assistance.

I want to stop. I want to love pacing myself. 

Can I let you in on a secret? I have no idea how to do that. I used to think that pacing was a dumb idea. I loved being able to run like the wind through a crazy day and check all the boxes, show up in all the right places.

My list of accomplishments made me feel powerful.

The truth is, I don't need accomplishments to make me powerful. In fact, when I pace myself, when I recognize my inadequacies, I am able to tap into Strength far greater than my own. This strength is steady and sure, filled with peace and rooted in joy. It doesn't rise and fall in response to hormones. 

As we approach 2018 and start making lists of "resolutions" or even well-meaning goals, I encourage you to first ask yourself, "What sort of strength am I depending on to accomplish these goals?" I also invite you to join me in making this your goal: learning to love pacing yourself. 

It may take years for us to learn to pace ourselves, but this year we could start by learning to love it.

Quite often, the things we love become the things we do. If we begin by learning to love pacing, perhaps we will begin to pace ourselves along the way. Maybe, just maybe, in five years we'll look back at the end of a marathon and realize it all began when we set out to love the steady, slow pace. 

-J