Running Broad Street 2010—Part IX

This is my last post on the 2010 Broad Street Run. If you’ve endured the excruciating, even tedious detail of the preceding eight posts, then know now that the end is in sight. What’s that? You thought there were going to be ten installments for ten miles? No, even I show a little mercy.

My enthusiasm for running Broad Street derived in part from achieving the goal, that is, to finish. So, around the 9-1/2 mile point, I began looking forward to the end of the run. Strangely, and perhaps for the first time during the run, the distance began to seem long. The mental game—an easy one, to be sure, at this point—was simply to hang in and make it over the line.

And so I did. On finishing, I did not feel excited or thrilled, but I did feel deeply satisfied that I’d achieved this goal. A year-and-a-half before, I had considered such challenges something that other people took up, but they were not for me. After all, I’d never been athletic, so anything that struck me as a feat—a deed of more gifted people than I—was out of my reach.

Running Broad Street, then, convinced me that running a ten-miler a modest goal for many people, especially those who like me might not have been inclined to such a strenuous activity. More importantly, I found the preparation and the run itself a source of joy, even when some of that joy was experienced only in the past perfect (that is, the enjoyment of having run rather than running). In short, if I can do it, then there are a lot of others out there who can as well.