Good luck to all you winter marathoners. I want to leave you with something to with something to think about when you hit the wall. This is your mantra. The warrior is within you. The warrior is within you. The warrior is within you.
When your warning lights begin to flash and you feel yourself losing altitude don’t give up hope. This is the most important thing: never give up hope. Keep the spark alive in your heart where your courage lies.
You may be in pain. Your body may be rebelling. The easiest thing, the most civilized thing is to give up. But you are not civilized. You are a warrior and you live on hope and courage. Don’t let that hope slide away into the thickening ooze of your mental state.
Hope is what makes us human. Hopelessness is walking death. No matter how hard it gets don’t give up hope. You may be suffering, but that’s ok. Suffer with a small spark of hope, of knowing that things can and will get better.
Don’t give up now. This is your time. This is your moment. This is what you trained so hard for on those cold mornings when mere mortals were snug in their beds. Keep hope alive!
Don’t turn your back on all that training and noble deprivation. You have put yourself in a position to succeed, to weather this storm. Your training has led to this point, this moment of truth. You have earned the right to struggle and strive.
Reach back, way back and give your whiny self a mental slap in the face. Refocus. Sure, it hurts, but you can put that aside. Just like the yogi that lies on a bed of nails you have the ability to mentally partition that pain, to wrap it up, put it in a box and set it on a shelf in the corner of your brain while you get on with your work. Put it aside.
Don’t fight with it. Don’t fight with your body as it starts to suffer. Focus inward now. Start with your breathing. Let each deep breath inflate your body like filling up a balloon. Feel it straighten your posture. Shoulders high and back. Back straight and tall. Breathe tall. Hips forward like your are being pulled along by an invisible rope. Inhale fully and let each breath relax and straighten your form and let your stride relax and flow.
Picture in your mind the easy flowing strides of the great marathoners. Watch the mental movie of Billy Rodgers breaking the course record at Boston and New York. See Meb and Ryan with their light and easy strides. See Paula and Kara effortlessly flowing towards the finish line with their light, flicking, smooth strides.
Now hold that breathing. Hold that posture. Hold that form and pace. Hold it until the next telephone pole or the next 20 steps and then hold it again for another. Ignore the course. Ignore your watch. Focus inwardly on the stride and the count. Count 20 more steps. Keep it going and you will find miraculously that the crises has passed or a new crises has come. But your focus remains the same.
This is your time. Even if your training and your body has betrayed you don’t lose hope. Relax and manage the crisis all the way to the end. This is your time. This is why you have chosen this thing so that you can look pain and unreasonable effort in the eye and declare that you are not afraid. That you have not given up hope and you will carry on.
The warrior is within you. The warrior is within you. The warrior Is within you.
I’ll see you out there.