I thought all marathon training was about control. You hit your miles, you nail your splits and you stack the full week on top of each other until race day finally arrives. Simple equation: discipline, results. But there is a way to rewrite plans in life, and a few months after training for this race, my dad fell ill.
My dad is quiet, but he is determined. Mountain bikes along a sturdy trail near his home in Vermont. I play hockey three nights a week until the late 60s. Hike the 272-mile long trail from Massachusetts to Canada. Moving his body was always his way of letting others know himself. So it feels like a certain kind of loss that cancer has taken away from it.
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Watching him travel through a round of radiation and chemotherapy this summer was guilty and heavy. A certain tug of war. When I’m training, I feel like I should be with him. When I’m with him, I feel like I should train. I’m trapped in this tired story shoulder-Nothing is enough, not where I am. And sometimes, I feel selfish, to be honest. As his body fights for something much more important, he chases his finish time, personal best.
Every run I missed felt like a strike against me. Each of them skipped training and reminded them that they had unraveled a neatly color-coded plan that they had tapered to the fridge. I told myself I lost a shot in the 3:30 marathon. But something changed somewhere between my father’s house late at night and the early morning when I ran anyway. I started to train for the Chicago Marathon less in performance and started watching training as a practice. I’ve been more about passing through myself, not about proving myself for miles.
Let go perfectly
When I first entered my marathon training plan on my phone’s Notes app, I believed it like the Bible. In a neat little box, 16 weeks, I promise to get what I wanted when I show up: 3 hours and 30 minutes. I loved clarity. Much of life resists control, but here’s what I said.
For the first few weeks I lived in that plan. The long run that spread over the weekend early in the morning, and when I nailed the pace, there was a slight victory. I felt like someone I could follow and could depend on. Maybe the rest of my life was able to feel organized, predictable and clean.
Spoiler: No. Your body doesn’t always respond the way you want it to. Life isn’t like that either. When my father’s health needed me elsewhere, and when I came back, I missed the run, and when I came back, the training plan no longer looked like a map – it looked like a ledger of failure. I could feel the time slipping.
But even in a messy, uneven week, I kept running. It’s not perfect, not based on planning. Just ahead.
Quiet lessons between miles
Some of the runs were just shuffles. After a night in the hospital, my legs felt like lead and my chest became worried and tingly. Still, there was a relief in the rhythm. The air from the old hospital was still clung to me, but the first clump of fresh air outside felt like oxygen to both of us. I often thought my dad would give anything and anything to breathe with me, outdoors in the fluorescent room, on a cool morning.
On the other mornings, the road surprised me with grace. Before dawn the air is cool and the sky opens in pink. Such a run felt like a gift. My breasts were loosening, and my thoughts were slower. For a while I could just breathe.
With those runs I stopped measuring the success of the watch. Pace was less important than presence. The counts appeared in the smallest way, choosing consistency over perfection. The training wasn’t about shaving for a few more seconds. It’s about making peace with the truth that I need more days to give, and I wouldn’t. And both were sufficient.
Rebuilding your success before race day
As race days approach, the marathon feels like a single date on a calendar, resembling the pinnacle of small, incomplete choices. I don’t pretend my training was perfect. I skipped it for weeks. In the morning, I ignored the alarm and couldn’t finish the long miles. But I learned that success is not perfect. It’s going back over and over, even if it’s messy.
At the moment when everything had to come together, I stopped watching race day. It’s just another mile marker. One chapter of the season has already taught me patience, stability and quiet satisfaction that appears.
Whether you’re going to make your finish line stronger or trip over the final stretch, you know that a real victory happened a long time ago.
The meaning of ending
October 12th, every time I log, every gel packet is packed in my pocket, and every night I go around the date in my mind. A part of me still wants a 3:30 finish. Still’s photos cross the line at a personal vest. But the wise part knows that it’s no longer the whole thing.
Because this is the truth. I’ve already learned what I’ve come here to learn. Training while helping me take care of my father taught me how to stay when things get tough. How to find beauty in the midst of confusion. Not only to measure pace charts and division times, but also strength in presence, no matter how tired I am, no matter how uncertain and unfortunate I feel.
On race day I stand at the starting line, not as the same runner I once thought success only meant speed. As someone who stands there and knows that it’s finished, it could be the most beautiful thing. And when I cross that line, I think of my father. How did he continue to move when his body betrayed him? How he taught me patience long before Cancer skated and slowed down his bike. His journey.
Source: Camille Styles – camillestyles.com
