A Beautiful Work In Progress by Mirna Valerio

Author:Mirna Valerio
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Autobiography, Humor
ISBN: 9781503943391
Publisher: Grand Harbor Press
Published: 2017-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

14

DO THE WORK

People always ask me how I get through those long, interminable miles during a race and how the hell I survive weekend after weekend of putting training miles in on road and trail. I don’t have a magic pill or a quick fix. It’s as simple as putting the work in, day in and day out.

In fact, nature has such a profound effect on me that I could keep moving my body through it for an eternity (unless it’s one of those times when I get spooked for some reason). On those days when I’m in nature, I feel the most invigorated and alive. My step is light, my mind is calm, and I’m in a zone filled with calm, limitless energy brimming right under my skin. My big feet fit effortlessly in the grooves of a technical trail. The pebbles and larger rocks that play Hide-and-Seek with me under soft and crunchy leaves in autumn hues do so whimsically. I begin to feel like a parkour expert stepping easily from some deep grove to the top of a boulder in a rock garden, and then gracefully hopping off, landing soundlessly on the giving ground. I become the trail and the trail becomes me. I see the moon . . .

I have experienced deep, sublime moments while out on both trail and road. Once, my friend Rebecca and I ran nine miles in the hot northern Georgia sun the day after the Charleston shooting of nine people. We felt no pain and no hardship as our bodies and minds quietly honored those who had succumbed to the shooter’s evil intentions.

Once, I found myself running alone on the deserted snow-covered trails of my school’s cross-country course on a snow day, flakes landing softly on my nose.

Another time I ran in the cool, crisp Tongass National Forest in Alaska on trails framed by jagged snow-covered mountains in the distance. Time was of no concern. I had nary a worry, and my brow was furrowed only by the intensity of the sun’s rays in my face.

And then there was the time when I finished my first marathon, with pain rolling in waves all over my body. The elation I felt as I crossed the finish line of the Marine Corps Marathon, high-fiving two marines. Oorah!

All these moments are, of course, tempered by the times I spend wondering why the hell I’m doing this because it’s so damn hard, or because it hurts, or because I could be recovering from a tough week at work on the couch. In the middle of a hot and hilly 20-miler on a technical trail, sometimes I have to remind myself that I chose to do this, and I chose to surrender myself to the ever-changing topography and whims of nature. I chose to put on those clothes that rubbed a hole in my thigh. I chose to wear shoes that wouldn’t protect my big toes those times I stubbed them against those same rocks and boulders that were playing Hide-and-Seek earlier.

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