I want to stop. I don't need to stop.

On the complexities of continuing forward

Photo by Lucas Favre

“You want to stop—you don’t need to stop.”

I repeat this to myself several times throughout a run. After the first half mile, when blood begins to tear through my legs. Forty minutes in, when an exit strategy begins to materialize too soon. When the final mile is coming to a close and I have to decide between shame or glory. It’s a mantra that forces me to listen to a different part of myself.

I find it fascinating how often we are clueless about life lessons that have been continuously narrativized for generations. Like, a million people have written about the problem that’s ruining your night. But no matter how many times I heard from an experience runner that running is mostly mental, I didn’t expect how much more I’d be fighting my thoughts than my breathing. How clear the dichotomy between my upper and lower body would become.

I’ve run mostly the same route since I began, but it has expanded alongside my fitness. I begin in front of my apartment complex and head southwest toward the expansive circle lined with overpriced townhomes. A lap here is about a half mile but looks like 100 at the beginning.

I veer off onto Bristol Street on the southwest corner, at the end of which lives an elderly man who, last fall as I began running in earnest, opened his garage door and charged toward me as I approached his driveway. I thought he was maybe angry, but he stopped me to tell me he watched me run past every day from his living room window, and he was so proud of me working so hard. The subtext was, “I am so proud of you for working so hard even with a body like yours.” I never look at his house when I run by.

I head down another residential street that seems to feel like a “do or die” moment for the run, and I really have to fight against die. There is a senior home on the far end right where the concrete begins to elevate ever so slightly and I often wonder if they’d notice me if I just laid down on their sidewalk. Mile two is always the hardest for some reason. I want to stop, but I don’t need to.

That street turns into Sunset Drive, the main drag in my little suburbia. I’m usually on this road after 5:30 pm so it’s often flowing with cars carrying people somewhere I imagine they get to sit and relax. There are so many passing faces that could be looking at me. I almost never care how other people see me until I wonder what these people will think if I start walking. The crosswalks that dot this street always become my anchor point, just a few more steps. You need to stop, but you don’t.

A recent development to the route: I turn left at the second to last crosswalk. My mileage has increased and I don’t get to head home quite yet. Sometimes I feel like I have only grown weaker but that left turn tells me otherwise. I head back to that expansive circle, running right past my nephew’s daycare. I wonder if he’d notice me if he saw me running past. It was here two weeks ago where, for the first time in months, I noticed my legs no longer hurt, that I had coasted into a comfortable rhythm my body could manage. And then a few steps later, my right foot began to fall asleep.

My route takes a right on Lexington Drive. This is the street my parents live on. They moved here last June to be closer to my three siblings and me and for the first time in ten years I randomly pass them by on the street. It feels like we have all lived here forever. I had just past their house on that run two weeks ago, still whispering “you want to stop—you don’t need to stop” to myself, when I realized maybe I actually did need to stop.

I could no longer feel my foot. I shook it out, stomped it a bit like a child making a point. A little bit of fear poke out of the corner of my mind. I have Type 1 Diabetes. I am well-controlled and have no complications, but still, my feet are not promised a forever. I tried to push away the annoyance trickling in. I really didn’t want to stop.

A right on Beardsley Street and I’m on the path home. This street is mostly downhill and it feels like a salve at the end of a run. I think it’s the only part of my route I’ve never walked. Although I did stop once more to attempt to wake that foot up.

It’s been almost two weeks since my right foot fell asleep and I’m still icing my Achilles tendon as I write this at my desk. My race is in five weeks and five days. I ran 8 miles this past Saturday, the longest distance I’ve ever run. I even managed to feel proud of myself after. My family keeps asking me if I’m going to keep running once the race is over. I can’t tell.

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