Leaning into the Season
Leaning into the Season
Reckoning with shifting goals and appreciation for my early morning runs
I did not run Chuckanut 50k last weekend.
One year ago, I was certain that’s how I’d spend this weekend, the 3rd weekend of March 2024. But then I had a baby and some things changed. Duh?
I knew I was having a baby, of course. That’s part of what made my Chuckanut dreams so exciting! The race would fall almost exactly on my daughter’s 1st birthday so how cool would that be to run it one year postpartum?! Bonus that it was also close to my own birthday and the same race where I ran my first 50k a few years ago. Some pretty epic full-circle moments to be had, for sure!
But when December 1st rolled around and I saw the registration reminder on my calendar, I was not excited. Adding hours of training to my weeks did not sound fun.
The day before registration opened, I ran a version of my standard neighborhood loop from my front door. Down to the beach, along the marina, and back up the hill with the Olympics peeping between houses. The sun was shining, I was sneaking this run into the middle of my workday, and having a GREAT TIME.
This was what I wanted to do with my running time! The 4-6 mile loops from my front door have been life-giving to me in this season and on that run, I remember thinking, “what if I spend this season getting stronger instead?” or “what if I simply lean into this habit and enjoy the simplicity?”
I did the hard thing and didn’t sign up. I told myself that living my own reality is more important than clutching to an idea that I made in a past life or idealizing a version of reality built upon what other people might think.
Flash forward to this morning; I woke up at 545 to run 5 miles from my front door and get home before the baby woke up. I’ve been doing this 5-6x week for the past few months and it has become my favorite time of day.
When I leave the house, it’s dark and quiet. Today was a crisp, clear morning and the stars were twinkling in the big, open sky. As the sun rose, pink and wispy cloud stripes stretched across the expanse of blue and got brighter with the sun. As I came back up the hill, the view across the Sound of the mountains clarified and it takes my breath away every single day. I get to live here! I am outside, alone, moving my body! Today the air smelled distinctly salty and I was audibly surrounded by barking sea lions, squawking seagulls, and chirping springtime birds commingled with the daily life of a neighborhood waking up.
Even on a rainy morning when the sun doesn’t fully rise, I come home from these runs giddy (and soaking wet)!
These morning runs are precious. It feels like I’ve stolen time and gotten away with it! I’ve created an extra hour and this is what I get to do with it! Especially in a season where I have a zillion competing priorities, the illusion of extra time is incredible.
I’m not training for a big race so a previous version of myself might think, “what’s the point of those early mornings if you’re not training?” They help me start my day off on the right foot. I get outside and move my body, I have alone time with my thoughts. I often walk and many times will pull out my phone and write down notes of big ideas swirling in my head – it’s when I do some of my best thinking. These runs aren’t measured by how far or fast I go but I’m still training – training to show up well for the rest of the day.
I’m finding myself again after pregnancy and a year of motherhood. I’m reparenting myself while learning how to parent. I’m getting to know this version of me and what priorities she has in this season of life. I’m training for all of that.
And someday I’ll train for big races again. I’m sometimes a little sad to realize I don’t miss it that much right now and hope to one day get back to big mountain days.
My pal, Yitka wrote about this recently, too, as if she’s been living in my brain,
Let’s all acknowledge that life has seasons, and not all pursuits—even the ones we’re passionate about—have to be jammed into every season. We can take breaks. (Sometimes those breaks last years.) We can change our priorities. We can do hard things, or we can choose to opt out of doing things at all.
Running serves as a lovely metaphor for the seasonality of my life and its shifting rhythms. A year ago, when I considered what my life would look like, I didn’t know anything. It’s true what they say that becoming a mother shatters you and rebuilds you in a way you can’t imagine. I’ve had a year of rebuilding and I could never have predicted what the mosaic of my life would look like today. Different things are nourishing me in this season which makes sense because I’m a different person than I was last year, last month, yesterday.
This is true for all of us, I think, not just new parents. We all change and grow as we walk through our own lives and experience its seasonality. So while it’s important to look forward and make plans, I think we also need to hold those plans loosely and allow for shifts as they come. And pause to rest in our current reality; hello to here.
Hi! I’m Liz. Thanks for being here and reading my journals on the journey. If you’re new, learn a bit more about me and this space here and consider subscribing to my weeklyish posts. You can choose which types of posts to receive via email and if you read in the Substack app, you can choose to get notifications in the app instead of emails with new posts.
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"I’m reparenting myself while learning how to parent." Yes. This.
For me, the fear in the breaks is not knowing if the old me is just paused for a moment or if she is dead and gone. There is fear that if I stop I'll never pick up the old pieces of myself again. And, since I don't know who I am without those identities, its a pretty big, scary void to look out into while I wait.