I’m writing a blog post on a Sunday for a change! For once I have a very lazy Sunday as I’m in the taper for my ultra which is happening next Saturday and I was feeling very tired yesterday so have decided to take a day off running today. I actually have a weekday-like day today as I’m going to be doing a full day of work today as well, but that all feels very chilled and relaxing as I have nowhere to be today, which I know for a lot of people might seem really boring but for me is just a welcome break from what’s felt like a too hectic few weeks of preparing for the ultra, work, some volunteer work and a friend coming to stay for a long weekend. I guess this is the classic definition of an introvert, someone who needs time on their own to recharge the batteries, and while I will probably feel very boring the next time someone asks me what I’ve been doing, I know that these couple of days over the bank holiday weekend of actually just doing my normal working day of writing, cooking, working and pottering round the house doing a bit of cleaning and tidying, with absolutely no socialising at all, is exactly what I need right now.
Other than that I’m not sure what to say in this post. Today’s A Course in Miracles (ACIM) lesson (55) was a recap of lessons 21-25 and was very much focused on how the world feels like a scary and depressing place because we have thoughts that are attacking both ourselves and others, and also that we don’t know what our purpose is in this life and don’t even know what’s best for ourselves.
I found that really helpful today as I have been starting to go from excited and happy about how things are going, to worrying about how I’m going to continue getting these results that I think I need to be happy, and stressing that I’m not getting on as well as I think I should be, and that I’m doing the wrong things and everything’s going to fall about, not to mention feeling slightly terrified about the upcoming ultramarathon I’ve been preparing for.
So today’s lesson has just come at exactly the right time and helped me to put things in perspective, which isn’t always easy when you’ve been training for one particular day, especially a day that’s going to test you, and which involves multiple moving parts, any and all of which could go “wrong”. I’ve put that last word in quote marks because the whole point of lessons 24 and 25 of ACIM,
I do not perceive my own best interests, and
I do not know what anything is for,
is that I have no idea what a good result next Saturday would be for me. In my ego, I would love to sail round, having fun, and get a personal best time on the course. But the reality is I don’t understand the purpose of anything that happens to me. I think I’m here to run well, gather lots of achievements, gather lots of friends who accept me for who I am, encounter people who meet my expectations of what nice people are like, etc. But I don’t, at the moment, on day 55 of the year-long ACIM workbook, understand what I am here for at all.
So today I’m really working on trying to drop all those expectations and recognising that those expectations are in fact what ruins my experience on this earth.
Already, just by questioning my ideas of what the perfect preparation for this ultra will be, I’ve had an idea which is going to simplify things massively. Just by relaxing my worry-filled brain.
And by dropping the need to have the perfect half marathon training, which is the next thing I’ll be focusing on after the ultra, I can just let that unfold naturally and easily and effortlessly as well, because as I keep having to remind myself again and again, that’s when I run the best anyway, so why oh why do I keep insisting on TRYING so hard, and PLANNING so much and attempting to CONTROL everything?
It’s strange. But equally, I think it’s pretty much what nearly everyone does all the time, and so it’s very easy to be influenced by our friends, TV, YouTube, the media, emails, blogs, etc, to do the same thing ourselves. You watch a video about how to improve your half marathon time and you automatically assume it’s true.
Again, it’s that seemingly difficult task of walking the tightrope between relaxing and letting life flow, and on the other hand going after what you want so that you don’t simply drift. But a lot of the world’s smartest spiritual thinkers seem to suggest that going after what you want in fact never works anyway, in terms of finding true happiness at least.
So, I’d love to “go after” a better time in my next half marathon, but the truth is I don’t even really know how to do that. I do have a plan but it’s actually very fuzzy. It’s mostly just slowly increase my mileage. And continue to try moderately hard in speed sessions, no in fact that’s not even the plan. The real plan, the one I know will work best, is to run how I feel in speed sessions, which means just listening to my body. You just can’t force it. You can’t force any of it.
And that’s sometimes frustrating, but mostly it’s actually pretty reassuring, because deep down we know what to do. We just have to give up the ego-driven thoughts and let our instincts, our intuition, guide us instead.