About a month ago my friend asked me if I was up for running a 5K race with her on an upcoming Saturday. I would be arriving back in town from a week-long business trip the night before the race but the idea of running a race appealed to me. Besides, I’d run a 5K three weeks prior and it hadn’t gone well. It was a hot day, I hadn’t warmed up, was dehydrated, and while I finished the run, I had to recuperate in the medical tent with ice packs. I was eager for a chance to replace that bad run with a good one. So, I said, “Sounds like fun,” and I registered for the race.
I arrived home the day before the race exhausted from my trip. It was the early afternoon when I arrived, so I napped and read and rested most of the day. Still, by evening, I started to think that I wouldn’t have much oomph for the next day’s race. I called my friend to tell her this. She wasn’t surprised, she knows how exhausting business trips can be. I told her I’d call her in the morning about whether or not I was going to run.
continued...
The next morning I felt more like myself, not as worn out as the day before. I really wanted to want to run the race. I wasn’t distinguishing between “wanting to want to” and true wanting to. But, that’s running. My friend didn’t want to run the race, either--so it didn’t make sense to back out just because I didn’t feel up to it.
The drive to the race was an hour and a half south. I allowed myself two hours, which would give me time to park and get my bearings once I got there. I stopped at Walgreen’s down the sreet from my house to buy a headband, which I stuffed with ice to put around my neck to keep cool during the run. Then I got on the road. I hadn’t driven the route before so it took me a while to realize it when I got off track. I lost thirty minutes, at least, back-tracking to the right route. Plus, the trip was longer than Mapquest claimed.
During the drive I called my friend a few times to say I’d gotten lost, then to say I would probably be there just in the time, then to say I’d be late, then to say she should start without me. I decided that I would start running when I finally got there. I kept updating the plan in my mind as the minutes ticked by, agreeing with myself that while it would be frustrating to start late that I was excited to run no matter what, even if I finished last, very last.
I arrived well after the race was over. There weren’t many runners registered, so everyone had finished by 40 minutes after the start time. I parked, removed my melted ice band from around my neck, and went to meet my friend and her boyfriend. We laughed and, while it took effort, I joked about how anticlimactic it was to have driven so far and not run. We said goodbye after 20 minutes or so, and I made the two-hour drive home.
As I was driving home I wondered, “Should I have turned around and gone home once I realized I was going to be so late?” (Subtext: is that what a “normal” person would have done?”) And, “Should I have just stayed home, period, and made the decision the night before rather than dragging it out?”
I remembered the characteristic that says adult children of alcoholics tend to lock themselves into a course of action and commit themselves to it without heeding signals that the end result doesn’t look promising. Wait. Is that what I’d done? Was my behavior a manifestation of my inability, as the child of alcoholics, to know when to stop, evaluate, and adjust the plan?
Perhaps.
There’s another characteristic, one that says adult children of alcoholics have trouble finishing projects and seeing things through. That would suggest that I did the right thing by keeping on with the race, trying to see things through. Right?
Maybe.
Ultimately, I know there isn’t a “right” or “wrong” choice. It’s not black and white. It wasn’t ‘wrong’ that I tried to make the race work, even when it was clear I would be too late to run it, and it wouldn’t have been ‘wrong’ for me to have stayed home, either. While I didn’t come to a conclusion about what characteristic was in play, I did realize something important in the process. I realized that the thing driving me forward wasn’t my inability to recognize a bad plan and alter it, no--the need to reclaim the bits of myself that my business trip had taken was driving me.
I get it. I'd committed to a race happening the day after I got home from a business trip not because I wanted to set myself up for disappointment, but to get “me” back as quickly as possible after my trip. That’s actually quite lovely. I had been looking out for myself.
I like that.
I got a late start on it that day (and, well, in life), but I did shed my business trip and got “me” back by the next day.
Comments