I write a lot about our inner reality, and how our experience internally is what makes the experience externally. It isn’t so much about whether something is “good” or “bad,” because nothing is inherently “good” or “bad.” I get a little irked when humans say things like “You made the best of a bad situation.” It’s not a bad situation. It’s “the experience.” This is a Taoist perspective and is hard to grok for a dualistic mind. But, as I wrote in my last piece, “the experience you’re having *is* the experience.” The trick to having peace is to allow yourself to move with that experience, rather than push against it, react to it, or try to change it.
Now, you may say “But Andee, you just wrote that this was the shittiest marathon.”
That was literal. I was talking about pooping. This was the FIRST marathon I ever ran where I stopped to poop. It was also my first Facetime call during a marathon, my first phone call, and my first road race run primarily on concrete. (10/10 don’t recommend.) The experience of the Houston Marathon was so rich, but what was richer was this morning when I got the usual email from MarathonFoto telling me the pics were ready, and I skimmed them to see myself so happy! I so rarely purchase race photos any longer; the novelty has primarily worn off. But damn- for a race that felt so garbage, these were some of the best photos of me ever taken. In shock at how lovely I looked, I punched in my credit card info.
This marathon taught me awesome lessons about myself. It also brought up old lessons that might have needed a revisit. For this, I’ll share the lessons and hope you can twist your brain around to realize they’re not about running. They’re about life.
#1. You get out what you put in.
I went into this experience undertrained. The marathon teaches you a valuable life lesson: you get out what you put in. There’s no cheating it, no escaping it. The only way to get back from the marathon is investment and perseverance, and such is the case with life. I have many friends and confidants who, when I tell them about running, say “Oh, that sounds just like—” and then they’ll mention something they excel at. Yes, running, and everything, share the same formula.
“You get what you give.”
Want money? Don’t be a cheapskate. The more money you flow out, the more you get back.
Want love? Don’t be an asshole. You get back the love you flow out.
Want people to support you and cheer for you? Cheer for other people.
This is the formula.
For this race, I had invested very little. I have accumulated fitness from just…. years. But unlike my back-to-back fall marathons of 2021 where, by the second one, I had prepped with six twenty milers and one 26.2, for Houston, I’d done a 17 and 18 over a month and called it good. By mile 10, I had this IT band flare-up on my left side (an issue I had in Chicago that I never rectified) and I knew at that moment that the only way to finish the race was to drop my pace from the 8:30-8:50 I was running to something turtle-like.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with me. I have been lazy.
In 2021 I stretched and rolled constantly. I can’t TELL you the last time I stretched and rolled. Not even after Chicago. I never bothered. In 2021, I ran 50+ mile weeks. In 2023, that dropped down to like 35.
You get out what you put in.
Then, you get a choice. Accept what is and work with it, or complain, call yourself a failure, make yourself a victim, tell stories about how “bad” you are, etc etc. If you do the latter, you have nobody to blame but yourself for your internal upset. You get back in life what you put in, in every area, all the time. There is no escaping it. This is personal development 101.
#2. The experience will end.
Your experience… is finite.
Perceived “good” experiences end. Perceived “bad” experiences end.
I first grokked this about 12 years ago, when I was training in the service bar at the fast-paced Times Square restaurant where I worked. It taught me some of the greatest bartending muscle memory, as that position pushed out hundreds of drinks an hour. When you trained in that service bar, it was very easy to get inundated (“in the weeds”) with the tickets flying out of the machine. The guy who trained me said something I have taken with me as a life lesson: “The drinks will get made.”
No matter how many tickets are in front of you, they will get made. The experience will end.
Such can be true about a marathon. Regardless of how it feels, how daunting, how painful, etc etc, the experience will end.
“The drinks will get made.” “The miles will be run.”
It won’t make it easier to make the drinks by looking sixteen tickets ahead. It won’t make the marathon easier by thinking of mile 20 when you’re in mile 14. No matter what, the race will end. Everything, every perceived negative experience will, eventually, end. It will end.
Your experience is finite. To have peace, be with the experience… not ahead of it. Not behind it.
#3 If you want to go far, go together
Runners say the phrase “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
After I realized I had to take roughly a minute and a half per mile off my pace, I understood I was in it for much longer than I initially expected. I popped in my AirPods and asked my friend Craig if he was up for a phone call. We ended up spending 38 minutes together. Maybe that took me a little bit out of “the moment,” but it also put me in a different “moment.” Before talking to Craig, I felt … bummed, pressured, and hurt. When he called, however, I got to say the words out loud “I’m hurt,” and that I was looking for a way to pass the time. Hearing his voice made things so much better. He told me he was amazed at my ability to persevere. (I don’t remember his exact statement but that’s what I heard, and it helped.)
“I have a lot of grit,” I said, and it was true. There was no way I wasn’t finishing that race.
We started having a seemingly deeper conversation as I thumped through miles 14-16. He told me stories and said kind words. What was wild about it was I couldn’t really recall what we talked about after the experience, but as the hours and days passed since that race, bits of it popped back into my mind. I remember one bit, where he was telling me about happiness, and how the difference in happiness if you received one million dollars versus two million dollars wasn’t much different, but if there was time in between receiving one million dollars and then another million dollars, that would make a difference.
Another story he told was about changing his guitar strings, and the difference in the scent of the new strings versus the old strings. He said he played music with those old strings as far back as when his dad was alive… Said he might write about it. I felt the energy of the “it” working through us, even though neither of us was doing much. Then, I thought of how my body was running a marathon… in Texas. And Craig’s body was in Ohio. And how other parts of us, energetic ones, were somewhere else outside of time and space co-creating our experiences. Mind-melding happening, and it was magic.
I was so grateful for those moments and for Craig. At one point he suggested we breathe together, and I told him I’d always remember that. It was coincidentally in the area of the West Loop, where I met J just a few days earlier.
(I still have to write about about my meeting with J. What a gift. If you want to know who J. is, I wrote about him here:
J, thanks for “Ishmael.” ANDEE SCARANTINO Read full story
#4. There are no other people
After Craig left to jump on another call, I called Martin. Martin also told me stories, which helped take my mind off the pain in my IT band (which was subsiding with the altered pace.) I enjoyed hearing about his morning, the progress of his book, and how he planned to make butter later that day with some heavy cream he had left over in his fridge from a friend’s visit. However, during our talk, I began to have stomach cramps. Maybe it was from being on the phone, slightly mouth-breathing with my speech, or running at a pace I wasn’t used to… Who knows? I also had digestive issues since the morning, culminating in my first-ever race poop at mile 12/13ish. I’m pretty sure the side-stitch was caused by a gel I ate. Either way, I got to a point where I had to stop to walk. (Just… for reference… I have not done that since Marathon #1)
Martin was the perfect companion for me during that experience because I began to get angry at the spectators who were cheering for me. I said they must have seen me as pathetic because I was running a pathetic pace in a pathetic pace group, “I’m so much better than this, they must pity me, they must pity me walking,” etc etc. Martin reminded me that nobody saw any of that— that *that* was the way I was seeing myself.
This is one of the greatest life lessons I wish I had learned earlier in my life, and one that some people sadly, never figure out.
There are no other people. We only see ourselves.
Other people do not “see us.” They aren’t “judging us.” They can only see you as deeply as they’re willing to see themselves. They can also only love you with that same depth, or accept you with that same depth. I realized I was in the pain cave, and it probably was best to let Martin go before I started getting hard to talk to. However, his words helped me ask myself some very deep and important questions.
“Why do I believe people see this in me? What are my beliefs about myself?”
