Different at the Finish Line

Kristin ran a marathon and wrote this

The night before I ran my first marathon I went to a dinner where Joan Benoit Samuelson spoke. There were hundreds of people there. I was all nerves and could barely eat the ziti. I noticed a group of women with matching shirts that said, “The person who starts the race isn’t the same one who finished it.” I thought that was pretty cheesy.

The next morning I joined a few thousand people in Ghiradelli Square and set out on a very long run. I laughed, I cried. I sprinted, I limped. Extra salty Gatorade made me sick. I wanted to quit, I never wanted the race to end. I still get teary thinking about seeing my parents in the last mile, how they flew across the country to cheer for me as I ran. The long ocean road which I’d find myself standing on a decade later forgetting it was part of the course but knowing in my bones that I’d been here before. I tumbled across those 26.2 miles and some things which I can’t quite name were smoothed out. Rough edges softened. 

The T-shirts were right. I was different at the finish line. I’d seen and felt and received and given new things and I was different now. My body and those miles had shown me that I was now capable of something which previously I was unsure of being able to do. 

I felt mellowed in a way or pressed into the knowing of myself or reclined into a new level of depth of self-trust. There was a knowing in my legs and lungs.

The things we (want to) do (will) change us. The shift might be infinitesimally small or it might be seismic. We won’t know until it’s done. But a change will occur.

This thing you want to do will change you. You won’t be the same person on the other side of creating it.

What a gift.

Story by Kristin. Edited by Margo-who-does-not-run-marathons.

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