Given that I have a handful of chickens, I know the adage “don’t count your eggs before they hatch” well. Although, granted, I thought once you clicked “submit” on the registration page and you paid your fees events could be counted as “hatched” and the journey started. Not so- the ultra I signed up for that would have happened in September is cancelled and I’m back to whatever is before “square one.”

I went on the prescribed ten-mile “easy” run this morning anyway, hitting the trail around 6 a.m. and watching distant storm clouds cast God rays on mountains across the valley. In a way, I am grateful I have a bit extra time to train (I can really pick how much extra time I have), and to really settle into running a lot more miles (and see if this is even something I can do, given how much I’ve been injured before.)

The morning hovered around 70-degrees and even though I was wearing a minimalist pair of Altras, I didn’t seem to have any feet or lower leg issues like I used to. Honestly, I’m shocked: given the number of injuries I had when I was running full-time, I sort of expected this older, more brittle version of myself to get injured right away. Yet, despite it being my first double-digit run of 2021, nothing snapped, cracked, popped or otherwise broke. Holy hell, how did I get so lucky?

I’m not going to lie. Running sure doesn’t feel like it did when I was 27. At a certain point when I was training for a 2:46 marathon and in the kind of shape you need to be to run that fast that long, I wrote something in my MFA thesis along the lines of: “I was born to run.” I realize that was my pride speaking because today showed me I was not, in fact, born to run.

I can run, and I can even run for ten miles, for which I’m grateful (honestly, it’s a miracle!) But there is no way that I can even begin to believe this is something that I was “born to do.” I was born to do a lot of things (arguably many of them I haven’t): have children, sprout stray eyebrow hairs in odd places, and set the oven on fire when I attempt to bake something— but nowhere on that list is “run for hours at a time.”

What I love about endurance sports—and why I still do them—is the body’s capacity to adapt to the demands you place on it in the course of a training plan. That fascinates me. But, that doesn’t mean I’m born to do it. I can adapt, I can get stronger, fitter, and faster given the right training conditions. But OMG I’m not at all born to run.

Today showed me that. I wasn’t trying to run fast (the program told me SLOW and so I started SLOW. Unfortunately, it wasn’t SLOW enough because I got even slower by the end.) I had a breathing pattern, the cadence of my steps and breath. But my heart rate was 160+ the entire time, which for old-me, is a lot of time to be in “the red.”

I also veered off onto some single track, climbed to the top of a rise, and then (sort of) got lost, which added both miles and anxiety to the adventure, perhaps explaining why I was dizzy and just barely holding onto consciousness at the end (I think I was also dehydrated—it’s not easy writing blogs, submitting your manuscript to agents for consideration or even to friends who will be “beta-readers”— all this bold, naked, brave “putting yourself out there” and I know that someone or more likely several someones, maybe at least five times a day thinks: that Rebecca— thank God I’m not her! She’s crazy, weird, stupid, boring, grammatically incorrect, insecure and … that first word, crazy!!!”

Needless to say, for weeks, I haven’t been sleeping much: I wake up with these crazy anxiety attacks that mimick that feeling you feel when you’re drowning and you can’t swim. Am I enough? Can I be enough to write a book? To run a race? I have no idea. Yes, I am for me. But for the world? Who can know the answer to that question?

And so, I run and continue to work through the motions of living the semblance of a normal life. It gets exhausting. I’m so tired of being exhausted like that.

AND THEN I took Freya for a hike in Desolation Wilderness, from Echo Lake to Tamarack Lake. She seemed to have a good time, but when you’re 100+ pounds and covered in enough white fur that people mistake you for a polar bear, well, that gets hot even if you’re at 8,000+ feet elevation. The hike itself wasn’t challenging: it was only challenging because I had a big, white dog who’s not in the best shape for this sort of thing and I was already tired from the run.

On the trail, I thought a lot about my anxiety, though. Why I am so afraid of other people reading my words. Judging my words and the life they describe. I wish I had a good answer for all of that. I think it comes back to the running, the race that was canceled: I just need to feel like I am going somewhere, that there is a point to all of this. It’s not just life as always, business as usual. Like I am going nowhere.

I’M NOT JUST THIS WEIRD POINTLESS AWFUL PERSON.

I can have a home of my own. I can write a book and own that story. I can own this body and rock it! I do not have to wait for permission to do these things.

Those are the words I tell myself as I wait for permission, as I shrink and give myself indigestion when I send my manuscript to another person, when I set out for a ten-mile run.

So, no I was not born to run or born to write. It makes me a complete wreck to do them both. I do them anyway, despite the pain. Somehow, I believe I need to.

I have a home office where I go. I feel safe there, writing on an antique vanity with my Mac on top. It’s a place where I write. I dream. But, mostly I write. This world where I’m a caterpillar and one day, if I keep writing and running and trying…. yeah, you know. The butterfly.

Poet William Stafford said: “Revise your life.”