What it Takes
Early this
morning, before our oldest left for work she overheard my husband and I
speaking. It was about a record I still hold and another one I didn’t realize I
set that same day nearly fifteen years ago. She wanted to know what it took to
set such records in running. I didn’t go into the injuries I’d incurred. Neither
the demons one fights, whilst in the process of attempting to set records. Yet,
I went into the amount of time and money that it took. The sacrifices. The commitments,
to EVERYTHING.
Time. The
time on your feet. The time you
sacrifice not going out to a movie, nor to eat out. The time you don’t have to
sacrifice. All that time while working
full time. Then add in raising children,
as well as wanting to be there for most of your children’s ballet, karate and
other organized activities. Then the time you should and do spend taking the
children to playdates, the zoos, the farms, the playgrounds, the fishing
excursions. I explained giving up sleep.
Banking on three to five hours of sleep many nights. All while working
full-time, raising and being there for two children and husband, cleaning your
own home, and running ninety to two hundred and thirty miles a week. I ran that
amount for the better part of twenty-six years.
The other
reality of time was that also my husband had to roll with it, when I insisted
on cooking meals instead of going out. Many nights as I ran through some nights
a week, my husband didn’t have a warm body there the whole entire night laying
next to him. I’d rise either at midnight or come in from a run at midnight. Or
rise at two in the morning and be back by eight in morning to take our
daughters to ballet. And in order for us to have couples’ time, after the
children were in bed by eight. I would lounge with my husband for three hours
watching movies and talking with him. I didn’t do lunches, once a year I had
coffee with somebody if it wasn’t business oriented.
And Ohhhhh
the MONEY. You have to have money to travel. Unless, you do what I did. That is
save up the money and do a few events. Train alone ninety-five percent of the
time. Train in every format of weather, because it’s all you can afford.
Running apparel, with the exception of sneakers. I don’t usually buy running
apparel. I wear ripped up “t’s” layered under old sweatshirts that have seen
better days. I didn’t and won’t buy top of the line anything. Sometimes I’ve
lucked out won a grant for a few thousand dollars. Yet, also I did many charity events which
helped motivate my intentions. Also, I
sent running stores customers, and the people who valued that I did that, who
owned those stores would give me top of the line jackets, sneakers and
sunglasses. I bartered for energy bars. I bribed people to run with me with a
barter. I’d give them a free session of bodywork for an hour if they would run
forty miles with me before-hand. I tried paying twenty dollars to this woman
once to run ten miles with me at the end of a sixty mile run in a park. She wouldn’t
take it. She’d ran ten and the extra ten miles for twenty bucks wasn’t worth it
to her.
I learned to
Be flexible, and NOT to think. Work more and later to compensate for the dollars
spent and to not miss the children’s waking hours. Some days I would work from
three in the afternoon till midnight in my office. Some days I’d work eight to
two, so I could see the children before and after school; then go back into the
office working six in the evening till eleven at night. Yet I knew I had been there for breakfast,
some lunches and many dinners (even if I couldn’t eat it all).
In the end,
although incurring damage here and there. I have a healthier life. I have a
fuller life. I’ve witnessed incredible things of nature, beyond many a being’s
belief. I’ve had the ability to think fully alone. I’ve become better at
trouble-shooting problems on the run for work and family. And I’ve had my share
of meeting up with the proverbial and sometimes real ‘Big Bad Wolf’ on
some runs. Yet, I survived when most
would not have, I’m sure. I concluded to our oldest that I was one of the lucky
POOR runners to set a record. Because
there are those that have set stupendous records, yet, they have the
money. They have less commitments embedded
in their lives perhaps by choice. I told
her as did my husband, that it’s all the choices we make. It’s about balance.
And to set a record. To live that life, is not always a balanced one. Something
is given up. Something is sacrificed. You just have to forge ahead and be
grateful that you had the opportunities to make such attempts at setting
records.---Jody-Lynn Reicher
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