For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you may have noticed that the art posts have been lacking the past couple of months. This wasn’t due to a lack of inspiration or a lack of passion. It was because I was focusing most of my free time on training for a marathon. Of course, I knew that this would be good for my health but also, in some, weird, roundabout way…I felt that, ultimately, this would be good for my art career. “What does running have to do with dots?” you may be wondering? Well I believe that by accomplishing my goal of running 26.2 miles, I taught my brain what it feels like to work your ass off and achieve a crazy goal. What follows is a list of some themes that I find can apply to both running and chasing a different kind of finish line; your passion.
Shock your system (and your family) with a crazy goal.
Let me start off my saying…
I HAVE NEVER BEEN A RUNNER
Let me say that again…
I HAVE NEVER BEEN A RUNNER!
I’ve also never been an athlete, unless you count 2 years of JV field hockey where I was the goalie for a very good team. Which translates to me sitting in the goal while the rest of my team was on the other side of the field scoring. Or I guess you could count the few basketball games I played at the local church in elementary school, where I scored 2 points…in our own hoop. Oh and that one softball season when I only managed to hit 1 decent pitch that ended up being a line drive to an opponent’s face.
You get the point, I’m not an athlete. I tried my hand in a couple different sports, but nothing quite clicked. I enjoy sports and enjoy watching other athletic people succeed, but that’s never been my cup of tea. So I think everyone was a little surprised when I announced last year that I wanted to run a marathon by 30.
Lucky for me, a family friend is a running coach and he said he would help me achieve this goal. First, he thought it would be good for me to run a half marathon…start a little bit “smaller.” Having run my longest run at about 6 miles (when I lived in Oklahoma for a month and literally was running out of boredom because I had nothing else to do), 13.1 miles is a big deal. So I started off with that. I completed my first half marathon last October in Brooklyn. It was a cool experience and made me realize how hard the marathon was going to be. I completed it in 2 hours and 27 minutes. That includes the extra 5 minutes at the end when I ran past the finish line. Remember that part about me having bad athletic luck? We can add that error to the list. But whatever, I got it done.
Having completed the half marathon, I had my mind set on running the full marathon. 26.2 miles. Sheesh. I was only interested in running one marathon in my life. I did not want this to become a new hobby of mine. If I was only planning on one run, I should make it a big one…like the New York City Marathon. And how perfect, it was 3 days before my 30th birthday. That was the one.
My mom rolled her eyes when I said it. Not out of disbelief or disgust, but more so out of, “of course you’re going for the biggest marathon in the world…the one you have to raise $2,620 for!” She knows her daughter…go big or go home.
My friends and a few strangers responded with “you’re crazy, I could never run that much.” I wish they understood that I don’t run. Running isn’t my hobby. It’s not something I’m crazy about or love to do.
I just set a crazy goal and was ready to complete it. Kind of like when I tell my friends and family, “I’m going to be a full time artist one day.”
The training will be daunting, but just put in the practice, day by day, mile by mile, one foot in front of the other.
When it was finally time for my training to begin, it was about 4 months out from the day of the race. Each week I would run about 4 times, 3 of the runs being “shorter” runs, 1 run being the long run. The longest training run would be 20 miles.
Starting out and hearing that your “short runs” could go up to 6 miles and your long run is 20 miles, after only having JUST completed your first half marathon months before, is terrifying. 20 miles is such a big number and it scared me from the beginning of the training. But I chipped away. Each training run, I just thought about putting one foot in front of the other and getting through the whole thing. I stayed focused and determined and (for all but 1 damn run) I was able to run the entire time. You might miss out on a night with your friends because you have a long run the next morning. You might have to go train when really all you want to do is watch a movie. But you have to remember the ultimate goal.
Kind of like that big goal of becoming a full time artist? You know the hours are going to be long. You’ll have to make sacrifices to complete the practice. You might feel like you suck at first and wonder how you’ll ever get to be “good enough.” But you have to keep working and take it one day at a time. One hour of practice at a time, one dot or stroke on the paper at a time.”
There will be days you will come up short, remember how it feels and carry it with you as a way to motivate yourself when it gets tough again.
11.81 miles.
Remember that “1 damn run” I just mentioned above? Yup. That’s the one. It was my first long run of my training since my half marathon. My running coach, Bill, told me to run 12 miles nice and easy.
My boyfriend and I went out around 8 or 9 in the morning to a local park with a 1.8 mile path around a lake. We were trying to avoid the heat of the mid-July sun by knocking out the run early. I was going to run 12 miles and my boyfriend said he was going to run until he got tired (with a weight vest on, of course). Things were fine for the first couple of miles but at around mile 10, I really started to feel fatigued. I got to 11.81 miles and I started to feel a little dizzy and not right. I turned off my Nike training club app and started walking the rest of the way around the lake to where my boyfriend and the car were waiting. I was so upset with myself. Looking back on it, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but I was so annoyed. I couldn’t finish that last .19 miles?! There are Starbucks placed closer together in some cities! I was honestly mad at myself for the rest of the day…I didn’t want to feel that way again.
The day that I fell .19 miles short might have been the most important training run of my entire 4 months of training, more important than all of my other completed long runs. Any time that I felt like giving up in my long runs, I thought about that day and how mad I was that I didn’t finish, and I found the way to keep going. When I ran the 20 miler months later, I really struggled. It’s the longest run of my training, and only 3 weeks out from the marathon. I started running too fast and by the end, I was exhausted. I thought about walking all the way up until 19.98 miles. But I remembered how I felt coming up short months before, and I found a way to keep pushing. It was so rewarding fighting my way through the 20 and being able to run the whole time.
I think we should look at our challenges or the times that we’ve come up short as lessons, not failures or times that we “lost.” We really never lose. Every short coming should be used as a lesson that we gain, not something that is taken away from us. We need to take a moment to feel the let down or the pain or the heartache and remember how that makes us feel so that the next time we are in a challenging situation, we remember those feelings so vividly, that we don’t want to feel them again. We work harder or do something differently so that we excel and win the moment.
In our creative process or our journey to pursue our passion, it is guaranteed that we will have road blocks. Gallery’s will turn us down or undervalue our work, people will steal our ideas and our intellectual property, our physical work will get lost or stolen or ruined. It’s so easy to give up right then and there. That is the easiest thing to do, and unfortunately for everyone, that’s what a lot of people do. Their ideas and their passions stop there. But what if we take that and flip it so that it’s a lesson? It will make us stronger in the future. We will be able to prevent it from happening or know how to handle it when it does happen.
Stop looking at shortcomings as failures, look at them as lessons.
Its okay to revise the details of the goal along the way, as long as the overall goal remains the same (and it is still big enough to scare you).
I think you can distinguish the runners from the non runners by the way they react when you say you’re going to run a marathon. The non-runners react with a sense of surprise, maybe a ‘good for you,’ or, in a few cases, a look of disgust. Runners on the other hand are quick to ask, “what’s your goal?” By this they’re asking, ‘how fast are you going to try to run it?’
After running the half marathon last year at 2:27, I just figured I could double my time. I thought that I could run the marathon in 5 hours. As my training runs got longer and longer, I asked myself, what is it that I really want to accomplish? Did I really care about the time that it would take for me to finish, or did I just want to finish? Was I thinking about the opinions of others when I set a time goal? In the end I decided that my goal was just to complete the marathon. It is 26.2 miles…that’s a lot! I just want to finish it and run the whole time without taking a break.
When I was about 25 years old, I said to myself, "I am going to be a full time artist by the time I’m 30.” Over the years, I thought about this goal a bit more and realized that it had a major flaw. If I get to 30, and I’m still not making a living off of my art…then what? Am I just going to give up and stop drawing? Hell no! I will keep going until I accomplish my goal. I had to revise my goal to, “I am going to be a full time artist.” Sure, I would have smaller weekly or monthly goals, but the biggest and most important goal was not going to change.
People spend decades working towards their goal. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, as long as you make it across that finish line.
Make sure the little details are in order so that you can focus on the bigger picture.
Here is a list of things that I needed in order to have a successful run.
Hyrdration in the days before and during the run
Proper nutrition during the 2-3 days before the run
The right meal right before the run
Gu chews during my longer runs
The right sneakers
The right socks, pants, sports bra, and top
A curated playlist of songs that motivate me and keep me moving
A good night’s rest the night before
Charged headphones and phone
Sunscreen
If any one of these minor details was off, it could ruin the entire run. Bad socks? I could get a blister by mile 2 and have to run 6 more miles as my skin is painfully rubbed off. Chicken alfredo 10 minutes before a run? Just ask Michael Scott how that worked out for him…If you haven’t seen The Office let me just tell you, it doesn’t end well for him. You better make sure you’re 10 feet away from a public restroom at all times!
Making sure that the little things are in order will enable you to focus all of your time and energy into completing the task at hand and be the best version of yourself. If you are operating at the highest level of productivity, you will be able to get to that goal quicker than if you have to spend time getting things in order because you weren’t prepared. When you are working on your passion or your goal, make sure you are able to focus and take care of the little things, whatever they may be for your work.
Learn from those who have done it before.
In the last couple of weeks leading up to my run, I was soaking in as much motivation as I possibly could. I read motivational quotes on pinterest. I listened to David Goggins’ Can’t Hurt Me and Meb Keflezighi’s 26 Marathons. I watched Remember the Titans and Lone Survivor. I learned from people who had been through incredibly tough circumstances and were able to have the mental and physical toughness to succeed. Hearing their stories made me realize that running 26.2 miles on perfectly functional legs was nothing compared to the physical battles that others have been through.
I was incredibly fortunate to have Bill, our family friend and running coach. We had weekly Facebook chats where he gave me my running assignments for that week. He also gave me a lot of advice and words of encouragement when I needed them. He knew exactly what to say to motivate me. When I felt like I had failed at that 11.81 miles he said, “That’s 12 miles in my book! You just ran 12 freaking miles!” As a seasoned marathoner, he had hit walls, he had been through the tough and long training, and he had crossed multiple finish lines. I trusted his word because he had run the race before. I owe a lot of my running success to Bill. His words before marathon day stuck with me through the 26.2 miles and I even wrote them down on my hand with a sharpie before the race. He said, “The hardest part is over, your training is behind you. This is your victory lap.”
We are very fortunate in that we live in a world where knowledge is always in the palm of our hands. We have websites, podcasts, movies, TV shows where we can find experts in any genre. We have facebook, instagram, pinterest, twitter where we can find millions of individuals who have done or are trying to do exactly what you are trying to do. If we use these tools, we are able to take the knowledge from the people who came before us, put our own spin on it and make it our own. We become the sum of the knowledge that came before us plus the knowledge that we have within ourselves. If we use this correctly we may even become stronger and smarter than the very people we research!
Study the greats, study the people who came before us who have done what we want to do and have “figured it out.” Even if they aren’t doing exactly what you want to achieve, there are so many life lessons packed in a story.
Find motivation and inspiration from loved ones on the days you can’t find it in yourself.
After completing the 20 mile training run, I thought to myself, ‘how the hell am I going to run 6.2 more miles if I feel this tired after 20.’ I was so exhausted. If you could’ve heard my inner dialogue, you would’ve thought I was in a scene from gladiator. I was yelling at myself, “FIGHT! PUSH THROUGH! THE WAR ISN’T OVER!” I was searching for any line that I could come up with in my brain that would make me finish that run. I also thought about a lot of the lessons that David Goggins talked about in his book. It was definitely a physical challenge but I believe the mental battle was the most difficult to win that day. This gave me an idea.
Before the run I asked a few of my loved ones if they would record short voice memos (under 30 seconds) that I could listen to at different miles throughout the race. This way, if I needed a little extra encouragement or a push to get up a hill, I could listen to a friend or a family member and remember all of the people who have my back and are there for me. These messages made me laugh, cry, and get me through each and every mile. Most of my loved ones couldn’t be there for the run, but being able to hear their voices made me feel like we were all in this together.
A lot of people keep their passions and their dreams close to their heart. They keep it inside because they are afraid their loved ones will judge them or won’t support them. First, I would just like to mention that someone who judges the passion of others is probably struggling because they don’t have a passion of their own. Don’t listen to them. If you know what it’s like to be passionate about something, you know the space that it takes up in your heart and in your life. You will never judge someone else for being passionate about something. The right kind of people will support you and help you stay positive through it all and these are the people you need to surround yourself with. Negative people are toxic and can ruin a dream if you aren’t careful.
The people who support us are there for us and want to see us win. If you are having a bad day or need an extra push, lean on them. If you call your friend or your parent or your cousin or whoever and say, “I am having a rough day. Can you give me some positivity?” I am almost certain that, that person will try to do or say something to make you smile.
Asking for help isn’t a weakness. Even the most successful people have days where they question their abilities and need someone to remind them of who they are. Find someone who believes in you and call on them if you need help. We are all trying to achieve something, we are all working towards a goal, we are all on this journey together, let’s help lift each other up.
Running this marathon was certainly the most challenging thing I have ever done, both physically and mentally. It took over half of a year (over a year if you count the half marathon last year) to complete but it was the coolest and most rewarding experience of my life. This made me realize that the harder you work towards a goal and the more time and effort you put into that goal, the more rewarding that goal will be when you achieve it.
Think of the last goal you achieved. It could be as little as, “I want to run 1 mile.” Or “I don’t want to drink soda for a week.” When you achieve that goal, don’t you feel amazing? Don’t you feel ready for the next goal, maybe a little bigger this time? Crushing goals becomes addicting. If it took me a year to experience the most rewarding event of my life, how rewarding will it feel to achieve something I’ve worked on for 5 years? Or 10? It might take me decades, but I know that when I achieve my goal of becoming a full time artist, it is going to feel pretty freaking amazing.
