There Is No Finish Line
The alarm went off at 5.55, due to the desire to beat the heat!
We lay there in that ‘got out get out of bed but want to stay in it’, hazy feeling for a few minutes, and I felt a slight pang for the early months of Anadi's and my time together; when we seemed to spend whole weekends in bed…!
Our ‘Long Sunday run’ consisted often of a five mile jaunt at 3pm…
I came up with a plan… ‘We could come back to bed once we’ve run…’!
This idea motivated us both to get up out of bed and into action!
My body broke through today, and Anadi’s too, he is essentially doing most of my training with me!
For the past three Sundays we have taken to running fifteen miles; for the twelve in the middle we loop around our two mile circuit, running the mile on the road down to Pigeon Island at a sustained but relaxed pace, and then jogging along the beach and the scrubland back to the beginning again…
We are well supported by Prudence who owns the café 'Prudy’s Escape' on the Beach… We buy bottles of water and our new sports fuel Coca Cola… and then we are able drink on each lap.
We used to put them behind a step but Prudence now looks after us... She keeps them in the fridge and produces them as we appear; like a true ‘pit stop’, we are refuelled and sent on our way!
On the jogging bits we were talking about ‘pressure’ and where we feel it and what it is about…
Because it makes no difference to the outcome…!
Sometimes pressuring ourselves achieves a ‘result’ which can trap us into believing it is 'the way'… but things are either going to happen or they are not and there isn’t much point in getting tense about it…
I have always liked the words of Ramana Maharshi...
‘Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain.The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.’
These words that have reminded me to be silent, and in the silence to trust that the energy and direction will emerge from my true soul path, not that of the mind…
And so Anadi and I looked at where we feel pressure….
And also where we don’t…
I feel no pressure in my writing or my work with people… I am committed, but there is no pressure or tension… and it has always been this way…
Anadi feels no pressure with running, he comes along with me and loves being fit, being with me and experiencing the outdoors. He reflected that he didn’t feel pressure in his days as a musician either…
We recognise that now, the areas where we feel some pressure are in the aspects of our life where we want to live this way more than anything!
For me running, for him computers…
He was telling me the process of progamming, that there is no end to it. That he has a firm foundation of knowledge but that he is always researching, testing out what he has learnt and then finding out if it works... And maybe finding he has to start all over again…
And running mirrors this, there is no end, as I have discovered. I am as keen now as I was when I was Sixteen. I love running as much as ever; I love it being central to my life and I am inspired by my friends Cecilia and Gordon who are older than me and show me that I can keep on running too.
Cecilia is 75 in June and I interviewed her when she was 70 years old... She had just run a world record for 5000m for the over 70’s - she ran fast - 21.50!
Gordon is 82 and running like the wind too…
And so Anadi and I explored where we feel some level of pressure; we recognised that we don’t have a ‘story’ attached to it in any way... I am now able to run and find out... I am able to commit and then show up…
But...
I am also aware of the need to let go to another level, and Anadi says he recognises this in the programming too…
Letting go of tension is all that is required, simple!
And today the evidence was there, in the past seven weeks I have simply ‘gone running’. We have done minimal speed work, mainly running about easily, often with our dogs!
The last two weeks our sustained but relaxed miles have ‘come out’ at around 7.45 per mile rather than our easy jogging pace of circa 9.30 - 10 minute miling…
I don’t look at the times during our run, thanks to being able to just set the garmin…
And today with the same relaxed, sustained effort the miles came out at 7 minute miles instead of 7.45….
It has ‘just happened’ – I have not put myself under pressure and even though I am aware there is another level to plumb and more letting go to do, the space here has leant itself to me running freer than before…
The journey continues – there is no finish line...
