100 Words Per Mile: Leaning Into It

There's no skirting around the hurt. You gotta go through it.

October 15, 2020
6.26 miles
52:54

Full disclosure, there are runs missing from this log. Part of this is due to technological error (dead phone, wonky app). Another part is due to that I’ve started training with a friend and the runs are becoming a little more unconventional. We’ve started focusing on amount of time run, and not so much distance. We’ve also begun strength-building runs to help get our muscles prepared for a three-hour trek.

On Tuesday, we ran from his house to a bridge and ran intervals. 75-80% effort on the up, slow trot on the way down. The run up the bridge is about a quarter of a mile, so doing this six times or so gives us something like a mile-and-a-half run. Add that to the mile it takes to run to the bridge and back and we end up doing something close to four miles. It’s a shorter run, but it feels like a lot more work.

My buddy Bill is ten years older than me but he used to run for the University of North Carolina, and I could use the guidance of a mentor of sort. My favorite part about college and graduate school was finding mentors. I’ve always been coachable. I’m always looking for a big brother somewhere, someone I can impress and make proud. I don’t know what that’s about. I met this friend through my cousin who’s really my aunt, and recently my wife and I attended his wedding. Just before that, we learned that he and his now wife are expecting. They weren’t trying at all.

When my wife and I learned this, we paused the new friendship. They invited us over for a day by their pool. They invited us over for a movie night. We politely declined because hanging out with a pregnant couple did not sound the least bit appetizing, especially since we’d yet to begin this IVF journey.

But sometimes when something is frustrating, the thing that helps me is to lean all the way in. So Bill and I talk frequently about having kids. We ponder what kind of kid we’ll have and imagine that if the IVF works this first time for Brittany and I, we’ll have children in the same grade. It feels better to embrace the fantasy, to feel hopeful about a situation, so I choose to do so.