Picking up the pieces

The Olympics are underway. I watched the Women's marathon event today. Today was also the commencement of the biannual split in my personal habit cycle. It's been a hazy last few months and to be honest, I have tried to run away from the failure of the previous season. Sure I completed a half marathon and a 25 K albeit with middling competence. But I am no middling competitor. That was the question I was running away from: Who am I? I am not someone who looks at a 25 K medal and feels satisfaction. Neither am I someone who looks at a Midnight Half certificate and smile. I was running away from the bottom line.

I didn't run 42.2 K last season. I didn't even come close. The failure of Mumbai is fresh as it was yesterday. And indeed it should be for as I sat in the plastic chair near Worli Dairy looking at the watch and the sun overhead in turns some truths were dazzlingly clear...I think the pain of my right heel helped focus on these harsher realities: I wasn't going to finish this race. That realisation was like a punch in the guts and it left me gutted. That's when I burnt that sensation deep into my being, into my soul if you will...that I would never forget how I felt at that moment and that I would overcome. 

The promise was lost in the haze of the off season and the company of indiscipline that I allowed myself to keep. But the searing pain of that hot Sunday morning will not go until I overcome. 

I watched the Women's marathon event: it was an incredible setting for the finish of a marathon. The last 2 K stretch was past Big Ben, down the Mall, past Buckingham Palace to the finish. Ethiopia, Kenya, Russia 1 2 3. What made me sit up with a twitch of a smile was the end of the race was exactly like  any other marathon event. The same camaraderie at the end, the same shouting crowds, the same grimaces, the same pain the same flood of emotion. 

I have some goals this time around and I shall keep trying.