i hit the wall

and continued forward alongside her

mile eight. or was it mile thirty four point two? or was it mile fifty six point four?

i imagine it was all of these mile markers and also the thousands of miles throughout life that have led me to this point.

i hit the wall. i’ve heard of hitting the wall in a race before. and it never quite happened like this. until it did.

very much like my training, the phases are shifting. for almost a year consecutively, i have been training.

and now my training looks like high amounts of rest, recovery and integration. this is not because my race schedule has chilled out. not in the slightest. training looks like this because my race calendar is wild! four marathons in four months. three of them within five weeks of each other. two of them in the same week, on two different continents. and well, four half marathons mixed in (two remaining).

i had a face to face meeting with my coach after the first marathon of twenty twenty four and she said “at this point, i can only manage your fatigue.” my schedule went from training eight hour days in triathlon season (sometimes consecutively) to multiple rest days in the same week. it was a shock to my system for sure. in order to increase my output, i had to increase my recovery. i believe that twelve miles is the longest training run i’ve done since the first marathon. and some weeks, like the double marathon week, i only ran twenty minutes the entire week.

so here i am, writing this. and moving through jet lag, resting, recovering and nourishing like never before. i am also racing mileage beyond what i’ve ever done.

to be honest, i miss the training season that i was accustomed to. it kicked my whole behind. and i really enjoy running anything past eighteen miles. i currently only race beyond that.

i set two personal records in the marathon. and then i hit the wall in this last one. maybe i have hit the wall before, and this one was just different. i approached the wall at mile eight and we worked together to finish a decent half marathon. and then we kept going. that’s what happened. we, the wall and i, kept going. on the second marathon, my body was physically drained on one of the hilliest courses and a teammate asked me to pace him to his personal record and all of the aliveness came back into my body. this time, though, it was just me. no one to support to a record. just me. on a whole different continent. six days after the last one. and here was the wall.

what am i going to do? keep going. quitting was not on the list. every step for the last thirteen miles hurt. i remembered hearing my triathlon coach tell me last year, whatever you do, DO NOT STOP. my chest was increasing the tightening for at least four miles. readjust, and DO NOT STOP. slow your roll, and DO NOT STOP. decrease your electrolyte intake on this course, DO NOT STOP (there’s benefit in those years of teaching human physiology). increase the water. play with the fuel differently. enjoy the experience. enjoy the experience, crystal, enjoy the experience.

so me and the wall kept rolling. the run was painful, the experience was beautiful. harmony is the intention. to me, that’s the beauty in the experience of running for me. i do it to experience the different virtues of harmony. i love it. and it’s far from pleasurable at times. there is a death that happens. and a birthing process.

taste. and see. and feel.

and do it again and again.

this process was a different one (as they always are). it was one that i could have stopped at any moment. and i kept going. the monday before, i couldn’t even put weight on my right ankle. there was no way that i was stopping now.

at mile twenty four, i heard a Black woman yell “go Black girl”. there were very few Black people in this place yet the proverbial ‘i see you sis’ was in the building. and that pulled me out. it was time to deliver. my coach always programs into my watch with two point two miles to go “this is what you trained for, give it all you’ve got”. what i had at that point was what i gave. and you know my girl hopped the continent with me to meet me at the finish line (and all throughout the course).

but we were not finished. this particular marathon had at least a two mile walk to exit after the finish line. i hadn’t experienced that level of pain until after i hit the finish line. my calves were seizing up. this walk is alone. nobody can see you except the other marathoners that are feeling the same way. it’s just us. it’s just us and the things that exist beyond the medals and photos. we all felt it in different ways. and i deeply appreciated being with people who got it. no words, no recaps. just presence with all that existed in that moment. the joy. the beauty. the excruciating pain. the six star finishers. some things are better just felt with the people who made the same commitment. thirty thousand runners. thirty thousand different stories. thirty thousand experiences that culminated in a two mile sanctuary. and some may call that sanctuary the pits of hell.

the wall was my balm. it is what held me. what pushed me. what spoke to me loudly and silently. the wall was never against me. it always was alongside me. how i interacted was completely up to me. i asked her to push me through the half and she did. she asked me to stick with her until mile twenty four and i did. together we experienced such a powerful experience. there were moments that required me to take it one kilometer at a time. and moments that i could only envision one step at a time. the wall invited me to the practice of presence. deep, deep presence. there was no pace to attain. no personal record to set. simply. deep presence. the kind of presence that holds me even when i don’t know that i want to be held. the kind of presence that welcomes resistance as an invitation to show her strength. the kind of presence that softens what yearns to lay down and hardens what needs to show up differently.

i hit the wall.

and carried forward alongside her.

your ‘walls’ are here for you, beloved one.

i’d love to see in the substack comments where this one landed for you.

until next time, here’s your invitation to engage in the things that invite you to feel the way i felt in the photo below (this is how i feel any time i have the privilege of pacing someone in a race).