Amy Lu's View

Today was Global Running Day, so I must blog about running.

I’ve blogged a lot about running and the various races I’ve run, but lately I’ve been thinking the most about the races I haven’t run.

Specifically, the last two races I’ve registered for, the Get in Gear Half Marathon and the Women Run the Cities 10 Mile. It’s with a mixture of shame, defiance, and rebelliousness that I announce that I bailed on BOTH of these races because of cold and rainy weather.

Com on, the Bib was even Purple!

The shirt PROVES I’m a runner, right?

I don’t think there is a quick or simple way to tell the tales of how I agonized over the decision not to run these races. Actually, I decided relatively far in advance not to run the Get in Gear because the forecast was for a crappy morning days before the race.

The decision only got painful when the forecast changed late in the game and it just felt too hard to change course: We hadn’t picked up our race numbers, we hadn’t gotten our supplies together, etc., etc. (preparing for a race does take surprising amount of advance effort) and yes, we had consumed an unwise amount of alcohol the night before the race. So we didn’t run the Get in Gear, even though it didn’t rain, and we felt like wimps.

Oh well, I tried to tell myself, the registration fee was cheap, my training hadn’t been going that well anyway, and I had another race coming up in three weeks: the Women Run the Cities.

So when the forecast for that race was also icky, I decided not to rush to judgment. I resolved that I would be prepared to run until the last moment.

But the last moment approached and the forecast got worse and worse…there was even a hypothermia alert. And I almost was swayed by a version of the sunk costs philosophy: I had already missed one race, and this race was much more expensive.

Finally, I thought about how I had signed up for the Women Run the Cities because it was supposed to be empowering and fun. Now you might be saying, “Isn’t the point of running any race to have fun?” and I answer that there are many meanings of “fun.” Races are usually much more about achieving a personal challenge…and the post-race bragging rights and celebrations.

However, the Women Run the Cities was supposed to fun in the more traditional sense, and I didn’t think I would enjoy any post-race celebrations (drinking) if I had to stand outside in the rain.

This epiphany dawned: It would actually be more empowering NOT to run the race and make myself suffer. I knew I could run 10 miles (okay, I didn’t actually know how fast under race conditions) but the biggest challenge for me was to let go of a plan (and a registration fee).

“Letting go” is a recurrent theme of the play I’m currently in, “Broken Hill” (yes, please, for the love of whatever you consider holy, please come see it next weekend). I am such a “J” (from the Myers Briggs personality test) that “letting go” is extremely hard. As family lore goes, one of our mom’s guiding principles is that YOU DO NOT QUIT. You may do a shitty job, but you do not quit. Plans are made, plans are followed, whether they are for dinner or relationships or careers.

This mindset has served me very well in most instances, but there are also times, as my “Broken Hill” character Claire chants, “It’s okay to let go.” Not only okay, but a wise gift you can give yourself and others.

Even though I did not run the Women Run the Cities 10 mile race, I did get the shirt, and I’ve already been proudly wearing it. Normally I would cringe to wear a shirt for a race I didn’t run, but 1) this is a super awesome shirt and 2) it reminds me of all these other life lessons I’ve learned.

This is all well and good, but I am still a bit adrift with this limbo I’m in of NOT having run a race in several months, and not being officially in training for anything (already having decided to take a break from marathons this year). I do not want to get burned by signing up for another race that gets squelched because of weather, but I am acting as if I am in training for the 4th of July Red, White and Boom Half Marathon.

Am I still a runner if I’m not “in training”? I ran for many years and many miles without the goal of completing a race…what was the appeal of that? This was even before selfies and Facebook and cool/funny/ironic/retro t-shirts that declare “Runner Runner Runner.” Can I go back to that?

Hmmm, it might be a take on the old “Serenity Prayer”:

Grant me the wisdom to be a tough, tenacious badass when I need to be and a hedonistic chillaxer when that’s more awesome, and the wisdom to know the difference (or at least what will result in better social media optix).