For three weeks every July, a bunch of men ride a hundred plus miles on their bicycles everyday during the Tour de France. I use to be an avid viewer. That all changed when cycling's grubby underbelly rolled over and invited the world to scratch. Most of us who really loved the beauty and grace of the sport took one look and shook our heads with disgust. We had been able to deny the dirty doping side of cycling until it was so clearly thrown in our face.
There's a phrase in cycling that I have returned to again and again over the years--it's probably universally spoken in athletic circles, but cycling is where I heard it first: ride your own ride.
For a summer, I ran a handful of 5Ks. I don't know why. I'm not athletic, and I am certainly not physically active enough to even consider being competitive. When I ran these runs, I really didn't care how fast I ran. I just didn't want to be last and I wanted to at least run across the finish line, even if I had had to walk somewhere along the course.
Sixteen months after having my daughter, I find that I have regained just about every ounce of weight I lost while I was pregnant. Yes, I am that freak of nature who weighed less at the end of my pregnancy than before. It's amazing what not being able to eat much more than grilled cheese and French fries will do for your waistline--especially when you can't eat them in any quantity without feeling horrible. It was a rough nine months.
Most women I know think that weight loss was a gift. Sadly, I have baked, cooked, eaten and parked myself all the way back to where I started. So, it's only natural that I feel a little bit of panic and pressure to do something about it. And so, I dug out my running shorts and sneakers.
Initially, I spent two weeks barely able to move after developing a horrible case of runner's knees. I was in so much pain, I was afraid I would drop my daughter every time I tried to carry her up the steps from the garage into the house, or the giant step at the front door. It was awful.
Fast forward to getting our treadmill up and running again, and getting passed the runner's knees, and I am once again tackling "Couch to 5K." When all this running started, I figured I should build slowly, and so it only made sense to follow some structure.
It was simple enough for the first several weeks. Run some. Walk some. I knew it would eventually get harder. But in the beginning, I felt pretty okay about my progress. And then, week five....
The instructions started correlating a distance with the running time. Up until this point, I had felt pretty good about "running my own run," because it wasn't a requirement that I be able to run a certain distance within a certain time constraint to be "successful."
Yesterday evening, I found myself foregoing use of the app on my phone, because I didn't want to feel like I had failed if I couldn't run two miles in twenty minutes. I just tried to run per the instructions, and not surprisingly, I wasn't able to finish two miles within the 20 minute time constraint. It took me another four minutes or so.
It doesn't matter, and it's completely stupid, but didn't want to "fail" in the eyes of a faceless app.
I think we all do things like this. We might tell ourselves to just do our best at things and not worry about what someone else thinks, or about comparing ourselves to people we view to be more successful.
It's not as easy to "ride your own ride," or "run your own run" as it sounds.
In the Tour, cyclists are under pressure, not only to win, but to represent their sponsors and gain precious air time. It drives cyclists to become liars and cheats in order to fulfill what was probably an honest and pure dream at one time. I wanted to believe that the smile on my very favorite French cyclist was driven by the pure joy of the sport, and not the adrenaline pump from a banned substance. Sadly, I was probably dazzled and bought into the unreality of the sport. (Not Tommy!)
In life, we also face pressures--in work, in parenting, in relationships and social circles. We often find ourselves "lacking," even if it is the result of self-inflicted judgement and doubt. That's when it becomes easy to forget our strengths and to squeeze ourselves into a mold or constraint that just won't ever fit, and frankly doesn't really matter.
I may never be able to do a 5K in less than 45 minutes, or without stopping to walk a few minutes and catch my breath. And I shouldn't let that define my "worth as a human being." Who cares? I haven't been able to get my daughter to eat a decent meal or take a nap today, and at this point, she's still cosleeping with us every night, because I when it came down to it, that was the only way I could get more than four or five hours of sleep a night. I'm letting her watch "Bubble Guppies" so I can write today. None of these things make me a bad parent, they just represent the kinds of challenges and solutions we all face.
At the end of the day, we all have to make a choice about who we are and how we get through "the race." I'll probably still continue to push myself to run those two miles in 20 minutes. I don't expect to succeed, but I'm stubborn, and won't let go until I reach a point where I have either injured myself or just given up. I'm not saying that's what I should do, but I know myself, and I know my flaws.
I don't have a solution for overcoming the urge to catch up, to keep up with, or outrun the figurative pack. And while I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't strive to be the best we can be, wouldn't it be good to sometimes be able to look at ourselves fairly and accept where we are instead of trying so hard to ride a ride or run a run that isn't true to who we are?
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