We Can Do Hard Things

It was but for the grace of pitying friends that I wasn't consistently picked last for teams in gym class. I was always short, slow and stumbling. I was a bad catch and a worse throw, always aiming for "not dead last." 

What I lacked in athletic ability I made up for in academic achievement. I was an advanced reader. I could write and spell and memorize historical dates. Math wasn't my strongest subject but even that I was better at than the average student. I wasn't sporty, but I was smart. I got plenty of praise for how thoughtful and bright I was, so who cared if I went out for volleyball?

I embraced the narrative that my parents, teachers and friends all crafted for me—good at school, bad at sports. No one ever told me I couldn't do it—but because I was good at certain things naturally, no one ever pushed me to become better at the things that didn't come so easily. 

There were times that I resented my parents for not forcing me to play sports. Sometimes this stemmed from feeling left out of the cultural zeitgeist (probably the closest I'll ever come to understanding what it's like to be an actual minority is being categorically disinterested in Husker football while living in Nebraska), and sometimes it came from the deep-down knowledge that I'd rarely been challenged and the ensuing fear that, when I was, I would be unprepared and come up short.

A huge step on the road to growing the fuck up, though, is taking ownership of your deficiencies. For me, it was a total non-epiphany. I can't pinpoint a specific instance that triggered the realization that, while I can surround myself with people who unfailingly push me to be better than I was the day before, I am the only one who can demand true excellence of myself. If there was a specific moment, maybe it was so seemingly mundane, I let it pass me by. More likely it was the culmination of thousands of miles run and hundreds of yoga classes, where I read the same mantra written on the bathroom wall: We can do hard things. 

Anyone who's talked to me more than twice knows I'm a fairly unsentimental person. I'm not what you'd call the mantra type, but now that I have three half marathons under my belt and am 18-mile long runs deep into my marathon training, it seems fitting. It's my response to friends, family and casual acquaintances who express amazement at how far I've come, and it's my response to myself when I get nervous thinking about how far I still have to go. 

It's true that you need to be in a certain physical condition to run any long distance, or embark on any number of other athletic endeavors, and getting there is a lengthy process. More important, though, is unlearning some of the stories about yourself that you and others have created, and that process is significantly more challenging. 

My marathon training does not seem easy. The thought of running for four (and maybe closer to five) hours nonstop still terrifies me—but it also excites me. To all the people who have been asking why, I say: Why not? We can do hard things. So let's try.