Last night, I pulled all the workouts from my training plan into my Garmin calendar. September 25th, here I come. Berlin, city of my rising breath and expanding heartbeat, I can’t wait to meet you again.
Today, the air seems quicker, despite the depressingly cool, stormy rain. A goal is set, and my path to reach it is plotted. Even the next two weeks of waiting, the internal stillness before training begins in earnest, are now charged with the electricity of anticipation. The layering begins again. That happy excitement grows in my mind, and again I’m ready for the physical effort, for the mental endurance.
Whereas before I was restless, untethered in mind, and unfocused in body, suddenly my spirit has whipped around, a magnet swinging wildly to magnetic north. And immediately all that crazed motion is centered, focused. All the energy remains, but I am tremblingly still.
This is not like before, when after my first Half, I didn’t train for my second Half, and deserved my injury. This time, I’m tapped into some part of me that lives for any challenge. The hard training to come brings trepidation, but I move to meet it, this opportunity to prove myself again.
I don’t know if I’m trying to prove myself to me, or to you. But in my soul, all the glory-infused fantasies again rise up and spur me to dream. I have goals that could be unreachable, and so to protect my pride, I’ll keep them inside until I can assess, realistically. But this feeling that anything is possible, that I can become more than even I have ever dreamed, is what being alive is about.
