Dealing with My Own Ghosts

Dealing with My Own Ghosts

February 11, 2017

Reference: The Complete Runner’s Day-By-Day Log

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By: Marty Jerome

January Journal

This beloved journal has been one of my greatest allies of all time in my quest to fitness. I have been a faithful user since I was in my early twenties. Every year I look forward to getting a hold of the upcoming one. This diary is well organized , better than any other by far! One of the my most motivational tools that really ignited me, is this January’s reflection. It hit home the minute I set my eyes on it. My never ending injuries that have cornered me into a never-ending hiatus are my always existing physical ghosts! It is like walking dead, but alive. Everything seems like a blur, I don’t know how I survived all through these years since my physical ghosts have been haunting me. My injuries come and mock me day by day! For me, it is not so much about aging, I have the proper instruments to always work around adding another year to my annual repertoire. Reaching another milestone age-wise didn't hinder my performance, my injuries are what murdered me alive, obliterated my mind, slaughtered my body, and impaired my enthusiasm almost permanently!  It hasn’t been easy, but tomorrow will be a new beginning to have a ruthless face-off with them to put an end to this vicious circle.

This powerful reflexion goes like this…

Ghosts

Not usually, but sometimes, starting new is profound. After a surgery, a divorce, or a barren and prolonged loss of self-recognition, one random day old running shoes will glare at you. Read into their scowl what you will.

Man, are those first workouts vindictive. When the inner yelps and throbs subside, do yourself this favor: Do not moralize. Forget the past, the runner you were or wanted to be. You owe nothing to a prior training program, no debt to a muddied racing bib or a cherished trail. Baby, you are born again.

Celebrate this liberation if you must (at least, when everything ceases to hurt), but one way or another, lay plans to use it – resolutely or even with reckless hope. Leap the fence with imagination, and worry about the practicalities only after you’ve landed in a heap on the other side. The danger of starting over is that you probably know more about training than is good for you. The slow and uneven progress, the banal and frequent interruptions that cheat long-term goals of the consistency required to make them real – these things wear away at determination. They mock high ideals.

This is because a runner’s memory is both a treasure and a curse. It won’t let you lie to yourself, because progress is measured in miles logged, workouts completed, pounds shed, finish lines crossed. Your memory of past training prepares you in the most practical ways for what lies ahead, especially with the business of setting goals and organizing workouts that deliver results. But the ghosts of injury, big and small failures, and obdurate boredom in daily workouts also linger in the brain, sucking the lifeblood from a new training program before you’ve even taken the first step.

Do you listen to or ignore all this chatter? You really have no choice, so there’s no need to fight it, though finding ways to quiet it down does wonders. Head games that try to deceive memory are a fool’s errand. Better just to simply use what you can. Starting over requires the courage of working with what you already know about yourself.

Muscles have memories of their own, and not just the kind that nag at you when you walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night. There’s even some science, however sketchy, that runner’s who have been away for a very long time return to peak fitness far faster than beginners. Perhaps this is because the memories in your muscles and those between your ears work together to propel you in the most efficient manner, to signal the onset of fatigue, to remind you that however much you are hurting at the moment, there’s still a little fuel in the tank.

Never mind how all this works. Even if your last training program went up in flames, memory is your uninvited ally in starting over. Sure, it takes courage. But there’s also the prospect that with new goals, you will scare away old ghosts.