Run, Write, Repeat

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I get up at 6:00AM. I brush my teeth and change into the clothes I’ve laid out the night before. I slip on socks and my running shoes. About a year ago, a friend suggested I get Lock Laces when my laces kept coming undone during our group runs. Groggy, I’m thankful I don’t have to tie my shoes.

Every weekday, at 7:00AM, I log into my computer. On days that I’ve run, I’m more awake and the cold brew that I’ve added to my post workout shake is beginning to hit. The other two days, I’m usually still in pajamas, and although I’ve been up playing with my son for an hour and have a hot coffee in hand, I’m not really ready to start the day.

Before my run, I never quite feel excited about the prospect of stepping outside. Until a few weeks ago, the sky was still completely dark, the infrequent streetlights and my head lamp lighting the way. After running a half-marathon in 2019, I took a few months off to let my body recover. The first day I decided to run in the dark, a pack of coyotes ran past on the sidewalk as I left my front door.

Before a writing session, I feel similar indifference. Perhaps if my son were not an early riser, I would choose to sleep in instead of running or writing. I know, however, that drifting back to sleep will guarantee at maximum an extra 10 minutes. The average is closer to about 30 seconds.

As I head outdoors, my body is stiff, a reminder that I will turn 40 this year. I kick my legs out in front of me, one after the other. I feel my hamstring resisting the movement. I bend down and sweep my hands beside my calf. My hamstring burns a little more. When I stood up after wrapping Christmas presents 4 years ago, my leg wouldn’t straighten. A stabbing pain under my kneecap answered my attempts to remedy the situation. After the episode repeated throughout the summer, I saw a doctor and a physical therapist. The therapist showed me how to stretch my hamstring and roll my IT band to prevent pulling on the knee cap. As I prepare to leave my driveway, I wish I had rolled my leg prior to the run. One at a time, I pull my feet up to stretch my quads and them I’m off.

As I sit at my desk, I feel the tightness in my legs. On days when I have just run, I wish that I had stretched longer. I remind myself to uncross my legs. If I sit in this way with the outside of my left ankle on the top of my right thigh, I risk a repeat of the dislocated kneecap. I sit up straight and lean back. I’m thankful for the office chair I purchased at the beginning of the pandemic to replace the old wooden chair that came from university surplus. The tightness isn’t only in my body, however. I turn over in my mind all my plans and worries for the day. I need to start the sourdough, make a grocery list, grade papers. I worry about the housing market, about my son returning to school after a year of virtual education, about police shootings. I feel guilty that these worries come simultaneously. I consider how the term “tightly wound” describes both my muscles and my mind.

Through the first few steps of my run, the pain lingers. Sometimes my ankle feels unstable, and I consider turning back because of the discomfort. Other times, I feel like I’m moving through mud, my legs sluggish and my breaths harder than they should be after only a few steps. I concentrate on my form. Although I’ve never trained with a coach, I can tell if I’m favoring one side or if I’m slouched over with poor posture. I try to correct my form. I remind myself to breathe in through my nose, slowing my breath and making it more effective.

As I begin writing, the words come slowly. I spend time searching for the right phrase. My train of thought is inconsistent. I hear the voices of Spongebob and Squidward from the iPad in the other room. I’m simultaneously annoyed by the sounds and thankful the videos distract my son so I can get words on the page. I’m supposed to be writing. I wonder how the breathing of my dogs can be so loud. I breathe in and out slowly. Time to focus, I remind myself.

As I continue running, the endorphins kick in, masking the pain. I breathe in the cool morning air and find a pace that feels comfortable. I look around hoping to see some wildlife: the deer who frequently cross the road just as the sun comes up or the rabbits that hop through my neighborhood. I listen to the birds chirping and then turn my focus to the podcast playing in my headphones. On the most successful mornings, I don’t even think about running. Once I find a pace, my body seems to take over. It knows what to do. I’m surprised that I’m already over the first hill. This is the reward for repetition.

Once my fingers start typing, the sounds of cartoons fade away and the dog’s snores become white noise. I watch as the words fill the page. I make a new connection. Things are starting to come together, and when I look down I’m surprised how quickly the time has passed. This is the reward for consistency.

Of course, sometimes the flow doesn’t happen. My cadence is off. My legs never lose their stiffness. I walk more than run. I groan as my phone reports my mile time. I wonder why I didn’t sleep longer, why I poured that extra glass of wine last night, why I stayed up watching another episode of Luther.

At my desk, I sometimes feel a similar dissatisfaction. I search my mental index for the same word for 20 minutes. I type and retype the same sentence. At the end of the session, I’ve deleted more than I’ve created. I could have skipped today. Or perhaps I would have been more focused if I had gotten up a little earlier, if I had eaten breakfast, if I hadn’t checked my email.

On these hard days, I miss my running group. Three years ago, I moved to Stillwater, OK. Before then, I ran every Wednesday night with the Denton Area Running Club. After the move, I found a similar, albeit much smaller group, and began to connect. I also began attending a boot camp class at the gym. The sense of community motivated me to show up, push harder, run faster. Then the pandemic hit.

On these hard days, I’m thankful for my writing group. Last summer, I joined Momentum, a co-writing program that hosts multiple Zoom writing sessions each day. Each session, we log on, record our goals, and write for 1 hour. Occasionally, we get distracted as we acknowledge the interruptions of kids and pets or celebrate a recent win. Then, our coach Rocío reminds us, “Focus Pocus,” and we get back to work. This group has been a blessing during the pandemic. On the hard days, this community keeps me going.

When I signed up to run the half-marathon in 2019, I had never run more than 5 miles. For years, my running had been inconsistent. The 3 mile runs my running group hosted every Wednesday night were sometimes the only miles I logged for months. When I signed up for the race, I printed out a 12-week training program. For next 3 months, I followed the plan. On the rare days that a timing or weather-related conflict prevented me from running, I made up the miles on the following day. Trust the process, I reminded myself when the miles felt hard. Trust the process, I told myself when the extreme heat at the 10k in Week 9 of the program forced me to walk most of the second half of the race. Trust the process, I told myself through pain and fatigue. The morning of the race, I lined up beside the 11:45 pacer. I’m not a fast runner, and my goal was a 12-minute mile. “I may not keep up with you, but I’m going to start in this group,” I told her. As the race began, I reminded myself, “Trust the process.” Each time the urge to walk overcame me, I reminded myself of the miles logged. And when I finally crossed the finish line 2 ½ hours later, the same pacer still by my side, I realized the process worked.

Finishing the Stilly Half Marathon in 2019

When I proposed my dissertation, my son was still in utero. His due date became the due date for my prospectus, a 20-page document that outlined the project I would complete over the next 3 years. As I began work on the dissertation itself, I was running on fumes. My son slept no more than 2 ½ hours at a time, and my brain felt fuzzy and unprepared to tackle intellectual thought. Still, I set aside time each week to write. At the beginning, the writing periods were short and lacked productivity. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, the output of these early sessions mattered little. What did matter was the habit I was building. Day after day, week after week, month and month, small pieces of the writing began to fit together. As my son got a little bit older and I was able to patch together childcare, the time I was able to devote to my writing increased. I left behind my grading and teaching preparations as I devoted time in coffee shops to this project. I signed up for monthly Dissertation Bootcamps, where I could spend more concentrated periods of time devoting myself to thinking about the problems I was tackling in my research. Daily, weekly, and even monthly, the progress often seemed incremental, but I had to trust the process. The time I had carved out had to be enough. And when I finally crossed the stage in December of 2017, it was. The process worked.

Celebrating PhD Graduation in 2017

The miles aren’t always easy. Progress doesn’t always seem like progress. And rest is essential. But as I’ve learned to trust the process, I’ve realized that even the most sluggish, slow, seemingly unproductive moments are part of a larger picture. The race gets run, the project gets done, and the process continues. Run, write, repeat.