Mountain Meditation

Last week I got the chance to slip away with my family and head for the hills, well mountains actually. I'm blessed to have a house available to me in the mountains of North Carolina, and it serves as a sanctuary for me to renew myself. This trip served up an extra treat, a jog around Bass Lake.

Now I've come out and written before about my training, and I'm disappointed that my progress has been so slow. However, I am still at it and trying to work up to a 5k. Anyway, while I was in NC, I slipped away early in the morning and headed out for a run.

It was beautiful. Perhaps the most enjoyable place I've ever run. It was so enjoyable that I pushed myself a little harder than I had been for the couple weeks before vacation, and that's when I learned a lesson: There is one run, but there is a front end and a back end.

I'm not claiming to be an expert. I've certainly got a lot to learn, and others could share much better on the subject of running. But I run more freely and further on the front end of a run, than on the back end. On the front end of a run I run the furthest before tiring, I barely break a sweat, and because of crazy insecurity issues I deal with, if I'm going to be seen by someone else, I want it to be on the front end of a run. I had a great front end during my run around Bass Lake. In fact, I ran longer than ever before.Then I slowed to a walk for a while and picked the pace up again; still the front end.

At the end of the front end I've done two intervals of running and I'm starting to sweat a little. My shirt is sticking to my shoulders, and the cool mountain breeze is rewarding me for the work I've put out, but it is only just beginning.

The back end begins with my walk and then dials back up to a run. My breathing becomes more labored and the sweat spigot has been turned to on. I'm running only half as far as I earlier did, and working to get there. I slow back down to a walk.

This is where the conversation starts in my head, and I say something to myself like, "You know you ran longer than ever before on the front end. You could call it a day and head back to your family." I don't listen; I pick up the pace.

Back to a run, albeit a slow run, I am wiping sweat out of my eyes, my shirt lays wet on my chest and makes a peeling sound with each stride bouncing up and down. I'm growing very tired, but the mental aspect is the most frustrating. What do I think about when I run? On the front end I think about how beautiful a place this is. I take pictures of pretty sites. I pray prayers of thanksgiving to God. On the back end I'm praying God will kill me and let me die with the pride of death by exercise. I'm thinking about breathing, keeping my arms low, and then the counting. Perhaps the most embarrassing part of my confession, I count the steps I take. If I'm trying to push for one more minute I start counting down from seventy five with each step of my left foot. If two minutes then 150.

I repeated these intervals another two times. I pass and am passed by the same people throughout my workout, because the lake trail is a loop. On the front end I was excited to see them and have them see me. On the back end I wish I was alone, and spend most of my time concentrating on taking one more step. On the front end I achieved a personal best, and on the back end I'm realizing personal worsts. I had stopped training on the back end a couple weeks before. I began being satisfied with the long runs on the front and giving up to early on the back. And there on Bass Lake I paid the price for not training the back end.

And as I walked myself back up the hill, step by step, to the car I saw life from the perspective of running around Bass Lake. Life is one run. There is a front end and a back end. I've heard others talk about a public life and a private life, and that is helpful to some degree except that there is only one life. We don't get to compartmentalize and live two lives. It's one run. On the front end, the more public side, we show what we can do, impress the people who are watching, and reach achievements that are celebrated by others. But the back end, the private side, where achievements are measured in the perseverance of one more step, that is where endurance develops. While I may be able to lessen my training on the back end and push a little further on the front end, I'll never endure life's race unless I'm training on the back end. It's harder, it's deeper, it requires more focus, concentration and work, but it what builds the inner strength to find success.

Train the back end as hard as you train the front end. As one runner put it, "The race is not to the swift, but to him who endures till the end."

--Ben