On Running Races, Chasing Love, and Learning That Finish Lines Don't Exist
I ran my first half marathon race when I was thirty. That year, I spent each month trying something new that I had never done before. The half marathon was my “something new” for November, but I registered months prior. When I started training in March, I had never run more than eight miles, and I averaged three miles per run. By race day, I had run up to eleven miles. “The adrenaline kicks in for the last two during the race,” race veteran friends told me. When I hit Mile 11 on race day, my inner thighs were so chafed I didn’t think I could go on (my race veteran friends forgot to tell me about anti-chafe balm). I started counting my steps, one by one, while focusing my thoughts on the ceremonious finish line. I wasn’t sure I would get there, but I was sure I would never run a half marathon again.
Last weekend, I ran my fourth half marathon race in Bend. I registered for the race two weeks prior when I learned it was during a weekend I already planned to be in Bend. Unlike the sleepless nights before prior races, I slept well before this one. I woke up rested and excited to participate. Around the Mile 7 marker, the course presented a steep incline on dirt terrain. I was surprised by the sight of it, but more surprised that seven miles of the course was already over. “Damn, less than half left,” I thought to myself as my glutes fired up. At the Mile 10 marker, my thoughts jumped not to the finish line, but to the fourteen miles I would run the following weekend. “At this point next week, I’ll still have 6.5K to go,” I calculated.
When I run, I listen to coaching guidance on the Nike Run Club App. This weekend, as I ran my fourteen miles, I listened to a ~2 hour guided run in which Coach Bennet talks about what it means to “finish” a run. He discusses how recovery—what you eat and how you stretch or sleep—is as much a part of the run as the foot-to-pavement part. “A run only ends when you wake up the next morning,” he says, “and then it’s time to run again.”
As I reflect on last weekend’s race in comparison to the ones prior, I am emboldened by how I now see a once unattainable “finish line” as no finish line at all, but instead as the starting line of a future run.
Finish lines are only as good as what we know in a given moment. During my first half marathon race, I had never known 13.1 miles. By my fourth, I knew not only my capacity to reach 13.1, but also my enthusiasm to continue running beyond that.
My thirtieth year of life was not just defined by running pursuits. It was also defined by marriage pursuits. Early in the year, I emailed over fifty friends asking them to set me up with anyone they deemed suitable. I went on a lot of dates, played many games of hard-to-get (offense and defense), and suffered from repeated heartbreak. Never pausing to heal, I plowed on. When I occasionally stopped to think, it was only to wonder what was so wrong with me that I was unmarried with no prospects at thirty. I acted as if at any moment, someone would drive by in a golf cart to disqualify me from the romantic race.
At the end of that year, I started dating the person who I assumed I would spend the rest of my life with, given that he was the person I was with at the golden age of thirty. Still, I frequently experienced gusts of uncertainty. “Is this the finish line? Am I here? And now what?” Standing at what I believed was the finish line I had only dreamt of, I looked ahead into a void, and backward into a fog. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Only me, at a time when I didn’t know how to shine on my own. It was unsettling, and even a bit depressing.
One year later, I found myself at a definitive finish line: the finish line of our relationship. With distance, I now know that this finish line was also the starting line for a more mature understanding of what I want and need from a life partner—and a more healthy search to find him. And both this finish and starting line were connected by the continued path of my romantic journey.
If I could go back in time, I’d tell my thirty-year-old self that one of the worst things we can do is to pursue finish lines that belong to others. None of us shares the same path or pace. Our paths may intersect or we may run alongside one another for some time, but we each run our own course. It’s not a race—not with anyone else, and not with yourself. It’s so easy to design and measure personal finish lines against those of others. But one of the best things we can do is convince ourselves that finish lines simply don’t exist in the first place.
Life’s finish lines aren’t really finish lines, are they? They are just a safe place to stop and check the map. To refuel. To take a turn. To start again. They are lightly drawn in the sand—easily smudged, dragged out, or washed away completely.
The same way I’m starting to see my daily runs as just one long, never-ending run, I’m starting to contemplate what it means to live a more fluid life path: one with goals and dreams that are defined not by an ending but by the continual commitment to keep going, whether forward, backward, or through an unexpected twist. And oh, how freeing it is to know that every step is a step in the right direction!
Have you been thinking about this too? Do you have a similar (or different!) perspective? Start a conversation with Ro and the Unabridged Ro community or share this letter with a friend.
I want to learn more about Unabridged Ro readers (that’s you!) to help guide me in my writing. Please consider sharing your thoughts in this four-minute anonymous survey.