Choices (Patterns)

(Author’s note: This story was conceived during the last 40 minutes of a run that became solo on Saturday January 17 in 7 degree weather. It was essential to helping me finish slogging through.)

So much of our successes or failures in life depends on the choices we make. Whether it is what we major in at school, the community we decide to live in or the career we go into, the quality of our lives usually comes down to how these choices work out. Nearly every day we are faced with choices, many of the minor variety and then there is the example of the US Air pilot, who was immediately faced with the choice of what to do with an airplane that had no working engines. His correct choice resulted in the saving of 155 lives and elevated him to deserved hero status. A vast majority of us will never be faced with anything close to that significance but it continues to be one of the life’s challenges on how we deal with the many smaller choices we face every day.

Because most of us now coach ourselves, we as runners are faced with choices that coaches used to make for us. Often, these choices decide what type of success we have as runners. Hopefully, the more experience we have gained will allow us to make the wise choice more often than not. On the third Saturday this January runners were faced with the challenges of running in frigid conditions. We had to decide how much clothing would be needed to survive weather that most experts warned us to avoid if possible. That choice was an easy one for me. I have always enjoyed frigid conditions as long as there was running room. We started out with a vigorous group of nine, which was around average. There is certain euphoria to exercising outdoors when the park is nearly devoid of all other forms of life. There is a certain camaraderie you feel towards anybody else outdoors. As we passed the two mile mark there was very little distance separating the group as if our closeness would help retain heat.

We approached the point in the course where you could make a choice of cutting the ten mile run to a seven. About 300 yards from reaching that point, my hamstring started to tug at me the way it has been doing the past few months. It is the kind of injury that can be very frustrating this time of year because treadmills are almost definitely not an option because of the repetition of motion so there was a cumulative effect of an injury and the inability to train because of it. Luckily, on this day, the hamstring started hurting at a time where there was the choice to cut my losses short.

I reluctantly turned at the short path, accompanied by two others who were going short for various medical reasons. I was immediately happy for my choice because my condition got progressively worse and I lost contact with the other two, giving me four miles and over 40 minutes to plod on in solitude. Somehow my wandering mind immediately recalled a classic Simon and Garfunkel song “Patterns”, with some incredibly appropriate lines it. “Like a rat in a maze, the path before me lies and the pattern never alters until the rat dies”. I remembered how we studied this song in high school English and I thought of that airplane pilot, who was probably far less esoteric and totally analytical as he quickly and correctly decided how to save a plane full of lives and everybody connected to those people.

The mind plays tricks when you are running alone in such conditions, so logical comparisons should not be expected here. As I ran along in near quiet, I thought of many things, one of which was how few activities can be tried in such weather. I was extremely pleased with my decision to not try and worsen a difficult situation by running ten miles.

On a day like January 17, nobody should be expected to have sympathy for you if you fall way off the pace. So as I ended my run and waited a few minutes for the others going ten, I again thought of “Patterns” and the classic ending:

“Like the color of my skin or the day that I grow old. My life is made of patterns that can scarcely be controlled “ Hopefully, the choice I made at three miles would enable to be run many more miles this year when the roads again fill up with weekend athletes.