Feeling physical and emotional pain are both part of running. There are times in a race or run when some body part may start to hurt or bother me. I have learned that if I focus on that hurt and resist that it is happening that pain continues and often intensifies . When I acknowledge the pain but don’t dwell on it and allow my mind and body to process the sensation I can then move forward and keep going. 

This is similar to emotions I may feel. As I run, there may be a time that I have some big feelings occur. Life is, after all, 50/50. Half of it I will spend feeling positive emotions and half will be spent feeling negative emotions. I often find myself saying I shouldn’t feel this way. I shouldn’t have this emotion. It is much more useful to say I am feeling sad or I feel frustrated, acknowledging the feeling. It’s helpful to fully allow myself to feel it, instead of telling myself that I shouldn’t feel that emotion. One way I process the emotions is to lean into it, think about how it feels in my body and where I feel it. Adding this practice of mindfulness allows me to feel, rather than resist, the emotions that come up in my life. 

Running puts me in a vulnerable place where emotions are often close to the surface. I have spent many runs where I needed to process some of life’s emotions through the pounding of my feet. Sometimes my feet needed to push hard, I needed to breathe hard, my heart needed to pound. Other times I felt so heavy from the emotion that it was a struggle to keep moving. I remember some very specific and poignant times where I have had to stop for a moment to allow the emotions and often the tears to flow. Life is beautiful, hard, and amazing! There have been tears of happiness, tears of frustration in not being able to take the pain from someone else, tears of hurt (physical and emotional), and tears from the immense joy from looking at the beautiful world we live in.

One example from my life that will forever be seared in my memory is when I ran a new personal best in the marathon. It was one of the happiest moments and the most difficult. I ran a new personal record by a few minutes, but I missed my goal by 29 seconds. The pictures I have from the moments before crossing the finish line and the few minutes after speak volumes. As I neared the finish line I could see that my goal was not going to happen that day and I felt heartbroken. It is written all over my face. I had some dear friends there very soon after I crossed the finish line and the tears began. I had worked SO hard and given what I had and yet it wasn’t enough. I felt all of those feelings hard. Then I remembered that I had just set a new PR and I was so thrilled! My tears were both of joy and defeat. The emotions were big and I allowed for them to all be there.

I would never give up those tears from the hard things if it meant I couldn’t experience all of the wonderful things as well. Does it sometimes all feel too much? Yes! In those moments you can take time to really think and feel the emotions. Allow those sensations and emotions to just be there. You don’t need to rush through the feelings. There is another side to the negative emotions and positivity will come. The mountaintop reminds me every single time that the beauty that awaits at the top is worth the hard climb.