Three times in the last 18 months, I’ve had an easy run. Woo-hoo! Isn’t that special?!
There has been a pattern to the awful runs. Typically it goes like this. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in the Bay Area, and I’m feeling wonderful as I drive into the hills, but once out on the trail, my energy goes blooey.
It has happened with stupefying regularity for a year and a half. And it’s always the same: I begin the run feeling awful, but in the back of my mind an inner voice says, “If you persevere with indomitable will, you’ll be able to rise above this experience, and you’ll come out of it feeling fine.” Though every run has been a struggle, most have ended well.
I drive fifty miles north to the beautiful coastal mountains of Marin County. I’m feeling ghastly, reeling and dizzy with malaise. At Tam Junction, I stop for bottled water, so weary that my neck aches. But I sense a still, small voice telling me to continue to Muir Woods and begin the run regardless.
The climb from Muir Woods to the ridge above Pantoll is beautiful – it’s three miles on a dirt road that ascends a relentless two thousand feet through redwood forests and lovely meadows with intermittent views far out over the ocean. But today it’s a terrible slog. Belabored by physical unease, my mind babbling, feeling fretful and ill, I look forward to turning around at the Pantoll ranger station and trundling back to the truck in “limp-home mode.” But when I reach Pantoll, the inner voice tells me to keep going.
I jog up the paved highway toward the ridge top. As I ascend by the margin of the road, I hear bagpipes, seemingly coming from the foggy woods below. But as I round a bend I see a group of people gathered on a high grassy knoll, dressed in formal attire: dark suits for the men, white dresses for the women. They are too far to tell what they are doing. The bagpipe suggests a memorial service. Are they mourning a departed friend? A beloved pet? A card tacked to a fencepost points directions to the Miller wedding.
I swing onto the steepest trail that leads upward to the ridge. After climbing a hundred feet, I turn and look down on the wedding party which is set in a stunning scene. As the bagpipes play “Wild Mountain Thyme” the little party stands in a circle, the bride in her white dress. Wisps of fog play tag with the sun, with wonderful views south to San Francisco and the Bay, and north over the rolling hills to Point Reyes. I let my heart bathe in the beauty of the scene, and send silent prayers of blessing to the newlyweds.
Reaching the ridge, I traverse the lovely single-track trails that crisscross the steep meadows, before turning back down toward Pantoll. I feel somewhat better mentally, but my body is still explicitly fried.
Arriving at Pantoll I feel no enthusiasm for returning by the route I’ve ascended. I wonder if there’s another trail that I can explore. I’m just reconciling myself to taking the fire road when I notice a trailhead at the end of the parking lot. A sign says Steep Ravine Trail. I recall that a friend has told me it’s a very special place.
I’ve never seen a more lovely mountain ravine – it suggests the jungle trails of Kauai, but more beautiful for being crisp and cool rather than languorously tropical. The trail descends at a moderate slope for three miles, shaded throughout, while hugging a cheerful stream that runs full. Mossy trees, giant ferns, and a plant with tall green stems and huge, platter-like leaves make a mythical scene.
Amid the beauty, my mood is reserved. I am deeply enjoying this wonderful place, but in a way that is entirely inward and still. I’ve won a difficult battle over my miserable, faltering body, and I feel not much like reinvesting in its questionable joys. It’s enough to feel this illusory glory in calmness, and enjoy it from within.
I’m aware that if I’m unable to find a trail over the hill to Muir Woods, I’ll have to climb the dreaded stairs of the Dipsea Trail. I meet a pair of hikers and ask them if they know of a cross trail, but they babble incoherently. I decide to enjoy Steep Ravine and face the Dipsea when I get there. The inner voice whispers that I’ll be okay if I remain rooted in this stillness.
Turning onto the Dipsea, I cross the footbridge to the base of the stairs and begin waddling upward at a fair pace, using an energy-saving sideways roll that I discovered during the Quadruple Dipsea race.
I’m amazed to find how much it helps, physically and mentally, to remain calm and inward. I’ve enjoyed the descent of Steep Ravine in that quiet inner place; and while sweating up the stairs I continue to rest in that silent cave. I think, “Perhaps this is where the months of lousy runs were leading. Perhaps I’m learning to subdue the body and win inner joy.”
I had long since discovered that God didn’t much care to make my runs pleasant or easy. Always, there were problems. Every good run came at a price – there had been no free passes, and few days when the running was effortless. The exceptions were notable. On the morning of the lottery for the 1997 Western States Hundred-Mile Endurance Run, I ran light as a feather, sailing effortlessly up a long hill, knowing with a calm inner certainty that my name had been drawn. When a friend phoned to tell me the news, I interrupted: “I know.”
Logic told me that running ought to become easier with time, as experience and training merged to make each run more blissful than the last. And God had laughed. He had tested me, in His kindness, because there is never joy without continual expansion.
I understood that the lessons of running are not about creating good runs but learning to find joy even when the running turns brutal. I’ve not mastered the art of unconquerable happiness, but I’ve become somewhat more attuned to the process, and my successes come more often.
I’ve bitched and raged at my bad runs. I’ve analyzed them, wondering if my attitude was wrong, or my diet was to blame. I’ve prayed impatiently and scratched for answers with the rational mind. I’ve blamed myself for the bad runs, and I’ve been ashamed of them. But God isn’t big on explanations. He prefers to teach us through our own experiences, guiding us to ice cream if it’s needed, or dragging us through brambles if it’s the shortest path to clarity and joy.
I’ve often been tempted to dismiss these months as wasted time. But now I am grateful. God is a surgeon who doesn’t shrink from inflicting pain to save His patient.
I am grateful. I no longer shy from the hard runs, as I might have done two years ago. My difficult experiences now hold a promise of joy.
Swami Kriyananda said it beautifully, in “Song of the Nightingale”:
Nightingale, nightingale
Sing of joy through the night.
Teach all men how to spin
Clouds of gloom into light.
Without silence, what is song?
Without night, where is dawn?
Were it not for men’s woes,
Who would smile at a rose?
Newcomers to running are enticed by pleasures of one kind, while experienced runners seek subtler fulfillments. What begins as a search for giddy joys, ends as a quest for a quiet bliss that endures. The inner athlete becomes the enduringly real athlete. Whether the body is injured or running strongly, our attention drifts to inner lessons that bring deeper joys than our fleeting outward successes. The runner gradually ascends from the body, through the heart, to the soul.