"The only way to define your limits
is by going beyond them."
- Anonymous
The road that lies ahead for many runners can appear to be daunting at times. Like entering into one's own personal Runner's Outerlimits espisode.
There is a hill and another hill, and the road slopes and twists and turns down like a hungry slithering snake. We may feel a bit out of sorts, stressed, tired, unsure. Soon the primitive reflex of self preservation called avoidance starts to make its entrance into the scene and we find ourselves at a cross roads. We can let avoidance take center stage and continue to run the course known and well traveled or take a chance and reach beyond our own outer limits.
It never seizes to amaze me how far we can go if we don't think too hard about the act of running and just do it. This week 2 of our members completed just over a 10K trek while starting out to do a customary 4-miler on Saturday. Congrats to Kim & Jenn! The route was not the same, there were hills along the way. They did it without knowing it, though their bodies may have started to feel it before their minds became aware, because they were not focused on "Time," "Pace," or "Distance." They were just enjoying the company and the surroundings.
Sometimes, even if you are training you have to run just to run as long as you can run and when your body feels it has had enough, give it just that extra "ump" to do a little more. Soon the old long runs become short runs, the short ones become warmups and your trekking like you never trekked before.
We may not be able to control the verticals or horizontals of the paths that lay ahead, but we can always reach new outer limits.
