Ready

Imagine being ready to run your first-ever marathon. You’ve trained for months, putting in the physical and mental work to make this day possible. Your body is in the best shape it’s ever been, your diet is on point, and you know without a doubt: you are ready.

Now imagine that moments before the race begins, you get a call — one that will change your life forever. It’s your doctor, telling you to stop. Don’t run the race. If you do, it’s possible that you’ll hurt yourself and never be able to run again.

There is no cure for what you have — in fact, the official medical diagnosis is “unexplained.” There is no surefire treatment, either. But there are a few options that have had decent results — about a 60% success rate of being able to run a marathon. And that 60% sure is better than 0%, so you decide to give it a shot. You’ve been ready for this race for a long time now, so what’s a few months of treatment?

Three years later, and dozens of races conditioned for, you have still not been able to run. The handful of times you’ve tried, you made it just a few miles before you got injured and had to turn back. Once, you didn’t even cross the starting line. Your body is still ready, but you’re starting to become exhausted from all the work to keep it that way — eating clean, training, yoga, meditation, acupuncture, vitamins, supplements, reading, journaling, and processing it all. 

You’re still ready, but you’re starting to have doubts that this day will ever come. Friends have run not only their first, but many their second, and even third marathons in the time it has taken you to get cleared for just one. You are starting to feel defeated and like your time may have passed. It’s becoming harder to connect with those running friends — once your closest — because you have less and less in common as your lives have diverged onto two distinct paths: runners and non-runners. It feels like you’ll never be part of the running club.

At certain points in your treatment, your doctor tells you that you can’t even train. No running at all. It can be dangerous to your health. You are not allowed to do one of the most primal, basic, life-giving things a person is meant to do, which stings the most. At other points, you actually have to take a pill that prevents you from running. It messes with your body so much that you are not physically able to run. This run-stopping pill is actually meant to make you able to run in the future. The irony is almost too much to bear.

Though not scientifically proven (again, it’s unexplained), it’s like your body has rejected the one thing you have wanted to do for your entire life — that you were born to do. The moment you try, it revolts. Though everyone (including doctors) says that preparing for a marathon is the best way to ensure success, your body lets you down time and time again.

So you decide to change things up.

A new doctor. A new protocol. A new training regimen. A new diet. A new acupuncturist. A new yoga teacher. New books. New ideas. New momentum.

Imagine being ready to run a marathon again, after all of those losses and letdowns. Imagine staring down that starting line and knowing you have put in years of work to get to this new day. Now imagine finishing the race. 

Would you do it all over again?