Running on hills has never bothered me all that much. Even when I didn't take running so seriously, I saw them as a challenge to defeat rather than an insurmountable obstacle to dread. That's just who I am. Every uphill has a downhill. And on that note, every downhill has an uphill. We all know this. But the thought that popped into my head yesterday surprised me:
You're fighting the downhill. Stop fighting the downhill.
Of all the things to fight - why on earth would you fight the downhill? But that's exactly what I was doing. I was shortening my stride, and fighting the very momentum that nature was giving me. Not just giving me, more like shoving it in my face, yelling, "TAKE IT! TAKE IT!" But there I was, pounding the earth like I was going out of style on a 40% incline and making the downhill just as difficult, and maybe more so, than an actual uphill.
I'm good at challenges, but I'm not so good at easy. I'm not so good at letting momentum take me where it will. I will almost always find away to make everything 10,000 times more complicated than it needs to be. I'll get lost because I followed a map to somewhere I already knew how to get to, but was so afraid of getting lost that I plugged it in my GPS anyway. Only to have the GPS take me to the back alley of a department store when I'm trying to get to the doctor's office. It's really, really, really freakin' hard to let go, and just let intuition take you where you're supposed to be.
Granted, I would end up lost if I always let intuition guide me everywhere. A little foresight and planning never hurt anybody. But it has to be a give and take...there has to be some letting go...I am working on that letting go. I'm working on the downhills.
And I'm getting better. I let go on the downhills of my runs, now. Let gravity do its job, for goodness' sake. And I let go this afternoon, when I knew I needed to go to the doctor and I didn't fight it, I just went. And now I have antibiotics to kill off what would normally turn into an even nastier case of bacterial tonsilitis than I currently have. My normal pattern when coming down with something: repeat the mantra, "I am not sick!" 100 times, ignore all warning symptoms just to save the hassle of putting things on hold to get better. Then, get sick anyway and increase my recovery time tenfold.
There are some things you just shouldn't try to fight without some help, and bacterial tonsillitis is one of those things. In the past I would probably be seething right now - seething at having to take some time off, seething at sitting around doing nothing but not feeling good enough to do anything else - but I'm trying hard to be mindful this time. There's nothing I can do about being sick. And it's not going to matter in six months, or even six weeks, unless I don't take the time now to take care of myself. So I'm just going to take care of myself, and not fight it. It's a new angle for me.
Being under the weather is a different kind of downhill...but I'll be on the upswing again soon, because I didn't fight it so hard this time.
All smiles,
b
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