This particular post began as a bunny hop down a few side trails. Here’s to hoping the message still comes through…
I recently finished another personal race season, something I usually do opposite of my cross country coaching season. This allows me to be able to focus on my own training without having to work it in around a busier time of year, and also so I’m free to train with the team when needed. As with my cross country runners, at the end of a race season, I’m supposed to take some down time to recover before going back into base training mode. While one purpose of such a break is physical rest/recovery, just as important is the mental rest. Unfortunately that can be the bigger struggle.
In the last few years, running has become for me a kind of therapy, or means to process through a lot of what life throws at me. I’ve had some fairly aggressive runs the days after each of my parents died. I both went into and bounced back from two surgeries with solid running strategies geared toward keeping me healthy so my body took the trauma better. And often I’m using running as a mental processor, to clear my head, to help runaway thoughts come together more cohesively, to manage the rabbit trails of grief, or loss, or change, or anger, or sadness…you name it.
What I didn’t time well this season was ending my racing at a time when grief would be a little higher, and I suddenly had no other distractions. April is the month I lost both my mom and my grandma, who was a strong mother figure to me. In the oscillating, ambushing way grief works, it slammed into me a bit as I “relaxed” into my recovery phase. The double whammy is that I’m also in a stage of transition. I’m fully ending my tenure at one school, having stopped teaching there two years ago and now finishing up my coaching role. I’m in process of potentially moving into a new position at another school. At the moment, I don’t feel I truly belong in either place.
Belonging. Be. Longing. Maybe that’s the root, the base trail, my brain is trying to wrap around as I’ve pounded through the last couple runs that were supposed to be fun and exploratory. Usually I enjoy these micro-sessions of not having set paces, or locations, or goals. I pull up the map and search out places I haven’t run before, places where there might be literal bunny trails (or deer, bear, or boar trails) to deviate onto. Instead I’m pounding out paces I didn’t even hit during race training. I already feel a bit untethered and the thought of going somewhere new is daunting. In the mean time, I don’t know if I’m running through the crazy, or running away, or trying to catch up to what remains ahead, somewhat unclearly in the distance.
What I know is to run. To give myself grace for whatever this current recovery session looks like. I can lace up my shoes, I can attach myself to a dog or two, I can revisit routes that are still familiar but I haven’t done in a while. The explorations will still be there when my mind is done rabbit trailing and my body is ready to have a turn.
Girl with Dog 