hitting the wall: to reach a point where you are physically or mentally unable to make progress or to continue doing something

I remember the first time I hit “The Wall”. How can you forget the day when your body literally turns on you, making it impossible to push yourself through to the end? For me, it was a physically traumatic, socially embarrassing blow to my ego.

It was 1993, I was just thirteen years old at a junior high school track meet. The spring air smelled like a mixture of fresh cut grass and warm synthetic rubber in the hot Texas sun. A breeze rippled a haze over the track blurring the finish line. I was stretching out my long lanky legs that were built for sprinting having just won two quick races – a 100-meter dash and a 200-meter dash. I finished my stretch and walked toward the grassy middle of the track proud and content.   

I had trained my body for the perfect sprint. I was a sprinting machine. I knew how to run on the balls of my feet, dig my cleats into the rubber on the track, and make myself aerodynamic by using my hands to chop through the air. But my secret weapon that I never forgot to employ was an age-old track trick once I reached the finish line. I would lean in, push my head forward and over the finish line. I would always be ‘ahead’ if I just leaned in – yes, pun intended.

My confidence surged as my track coach suddenly approached me. “We need someone to run the 400-meter dash – think you are up for it?”

“Yes!” I answered a little too quickly, a little too confidently. When I heard it was just a ‘dash’ my mind snapped to “of course, I can.” I wasn’t built for the long runs, but I could handle a dash that was just one time around the track. Never mind that I had never trained or completed a 400-meter dash. I would just employ all of my same old tricks – start out sprinting as fast as I could, aerodynamically chop the air, and lean in right before the finish line – worked every time.

The sun burned a little hotter on my face as I stood on the starting line for that 400-meter dash. I quickly glanced over at my competition standing to either side of me who looked nervous while they stretched. Maybe they knew I was the winner of the previous dashes and had heard how fast I was.  

Before my ego could get any bigger, the shot went off. Instinctively, my muscles snapped to attention, I dug the balls of my feet into the rubber, and chopped the air with my hands. Mere seconds passed when I left my competition in the dust. I was the hare and they were the tortoises. Soon, this dash would be another win I could claim during this track meet. I made it to 100 meters with no one else around me and surveyed the rest of the track that lay ahead – about 300 meters to go. I felt the familiar stitch in my side, the burn in my shins, but nothing my sprinting machine body couldn’t handle. I would just keep pounding that full out pace until the end – or could I?

I rounded the halfway mark flying but suddenly it happened. First, I felt it in my lanky legs as the quick burn instantly turned to lead bricks. The stich in my side turned to a gasp for air. The essence of the run went from a soaring overinflated confidence to a struggling bruised ego. The hare literally transformed – against its will – into the tortoise as my competition streamed by me on the track struggling to lift my legs.  

To this day, I’m still not sure how I ended up crossing the finish line of that race. Instead of leaning in, I leaned on someone to help me crawl across. Hitting the wall was embarrassing. It was a blow to my ego. It hurt. Not long after that, I hung up my scuffed-up cleats, committed to forgetting how my body turned on me, and stored it deep in the recesses of my mind. At thirteen, I was done with running forever. I never wanted my body to do that to me again.

As an adult, out of pride and self-defense, if people asked me if I ran, I would always tell them, “No, I’m not a runner but I’m a great spectator!” I was content watching from the sidelines cheering on my brother, my husband, and my friends as they ran their long-distance races. I comfortably watched these “real runners” who had trained to avoid hitting the wall and cheered as they crossed their own finish lines.

Thankfully, I made it through my young adult life avoiding any more embarrassing walls. That is until I started quickly approaching another wall – one that was largely out of my control. I was nearing the ‘midlife wall’ of life. It’s hard to forget the day you look down at your body and see a saggy mid-section and run your fingers over the hard-earned stretch marks and realize that your child bearing years are nearly over.

Don’t get me wrong, I am proud of my body and what it has endured in my life. It carried me through my twenties while pushing my mind to earn an engineering degree. It led me into my thirties when I flew offshore in helicopters, climbed aboard offshore oil platforms, and then delivered into this world three beautiful babies for which I am forever grateful and blessed.

But in all honesty, I had stopped paying attention to my body. I had ignored it while focusing on my kids and their naps, their nourishment, and their needs.  

And as ironic as life usually is, it was that day almost a year before turning forty that I had a very real desire to want to prove that my body could do something physically difficult again. I needed to prove to myself that my body could get me across another finish line.

So in a moment of desperation, or trying to chase after my youth, I signed up for my first 5K and told everyone that would listen that this former sprinter was training for a long-distance race. I was on a mission. Every week, on the streets of my neighborhood, I trained that almost forty-year-old body to run a mile slowly without stopping.

This time it was different. I worked with my body and listened to it to find its ideal pace – the one I refer to as my cruise control pace – where I could settle comfortably into the longest run of my life. I trained and ran after my youth day after day until I completed my mission of three 5Ks, logged hundreds of training miles, and successfully avoided hitting any walls as I went on to celebrate my fortieth year into 2020.

But 2020 was the year we all hit “The Wall” in our own way. It’s hard to forget the day when the world stopped turning – travelling halted, visits ceased, schools closed – and we literally put up barriers around ourselves to isolate from the virus behind the walls of our own homes.

Walls are everywhere. You can literally feel the invisible six-foot distanced walls out in public. You can visibly see the plastic walls partitioning cashiers at grocery stores, plastic walls separating us from fast-food carryout, and plastic walls separating kids in schools.

But what is worse is that the finish line of getting through the walls of the pandemic is blurred and keeps changing. In the spring of 2020, time was measured in increments of fourteen days to slow the spread. Trying to go back to some normalcy has been one of the hardest walls I’ve faced since that day at the junior high school track meet. Now with the vaccine available, we are finally seeing the light at the finish line of this “The Pandemic Wall”. One thing I do know for certain is that years from now we will all demarcate our lives as when the pandemic “race” started and stopped.

But what got me through the initial walls of the pandemic lockdown? What has helped me start again in a world of uncertainty? What still gets me through the unpredictability of catching the virus today? Ironically, running.

Running let me break free from being locked down as I ran uninhibited toward the sunsets in our neighborhood.

Running gave me hope in mankind when I could smile and wave hello to my neighbors on the streets.

Running reminded me of my friends out there as we virtually cheered each on through running, through isolation, and through remote teaching our children.  

Running gave me faith when I asked God for guidance when the world tumbled headlong into the pandemic, people died from the virus, racial division spread, the price of oil plummeted, and political division went rampant.

In this eleventh month of the pandemic, there are days it’s hard to run even one mile. There are days when I’ve set my mind to do a long run but my body has nothing left to give as I have to limp home to ice, stretch, and recover.

But now I no longer run to prove to myself that my body is capable of crossing a finish line. I no longer run to go as fast as I possibly can. I really don’t even run to test the limits of how far I can go.  

Now I run because I don’t ever want to take a simple deep breath for granted knowing a real outcome of the virus is leaving people gasping for their breath.

I run because my body – saggy mid-section and all – still lets me.

I run in prayer when I don’t know where else to turn but to God.

I run to say hello and smile at my neighbors.

I run simply to be with my dog.

I run for my husband when we get to run together on a run date.

I run for my kids especially so they will comment on how smelly I am when I get in the door and I can tackle them with the sweatiest of hugs.

I run for the simple things now despite the walls that will inevitably come around again.

Most of all running has taught me to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other, control my pace, run steady right at “The Walls” and to always keep leaning in to the finish lines of this life.