Tuesday, June 25, 2024 – Joy and Anxiety

Hi Everyone!

Congrats to all who ran in our Ekiden team challenge last Tuesday! Jordan, Chris, Madalyn, Jeff, Carolyn, Cindy, Laura, Sam F, Erin, Elizabeth, Seanna and Amanda! And thank you to all who came out and cheered. It is always such a feel good event of bringing runners and communities together and celebrating by doing what we love. Put the memory of this experience in a little bottle and uncork it in the depths of winter – it will bring a smile to your pale, frozen face.

This past weekend I went to see the movie Inside Out 2. It was smart and so well done. This isn’t a spoiler, but the premise is that as she goes through puberty, new emotions show up for the main character to help guide her through life. The big new one is Anxiety. Anxiety becomes a key player, and is in direct contention with Joy. Anxiety and Joy can’t both be in control at the same time. At one point, Joy realizes that growing up means that she has to take more of a backseat than she used to. And Anxiety is also there with the best interest of the main character and is trying to help her succeed.

Isn’t this true though. It would be nice if we could go through life with the pure joy of children all the time, but if we were all happy golden retrievers, not a lot would get done. Anxiety is our cue to make plans, undertake hard things, push ourselves into discomfort for growth. But the trick is to try to allow joy back in in points along the way. Anxiety tries not to let that happen because she’s a control freak. She is full of “what if’s …” She would prefer to bottle up Joy and send her far away, because Joy is not helping with the task at hand. How relatable is that. I think the lesson here is that we can’t let anxiety take over. Some of us have to try harder than others to bring joy back in, but she is there, waiting for her chance when we look for her.

Running and sports epitomize this very well. When we were kids, we all ran and played with pure joy. Why else would we do it? At some point goals, and identities and expectations and paths to “success” got brought in. I’m not saying these things are bad (again, we can’t remain happy-go-lucky children). But they are just a part of the overall picture. We can’t let them replace the joy we once had. We have to find a way to let them sit beside the joy which brought us here in the first place. I think that one blessing of getting older (way beyond teenage years), is that I find my joy in running coming back to the control panel. Don’t worry – anxiety has a large role in many other areas of my life – but she seems to have played herself out in my running. Or maybe she’s just too consumed with other areas. Either way, I’m happy to say that my joy in running never totally disappeared, even in the years of trying so hard to hit times, and caring what people thought, and judging myself by my results. Races can still bring on some anxiety – that’s natural, and again, she’s working in our interest so we perform our best. But joy elbows her out of the way once her job of getting me on the start line or up for a big training session are done.

If you look at picture from our Ekiden, you can see a lot of joy on our faces – whether running, cheering, or standing around. I appreciate this crew for prioritizing and encouraging that. I know we all know anxiety well, and most of us have to consciously work to keep joy at the forefront, but I think it’s worth continuing to pursue. In many areas of life, but especially in running.

On to tomorrow’s workout! Let’s do a fartlek on the spit. Meet at our usual Lakeshore and Leslie – 6:05 drills, 6:15 GO.

1. Let’s do sets of 3-2-1 min hard w 1 min bw reps, 3 min bw sets. Range of 3-4 sets. Go by feel.

This might be a good time to take an LES team pic so wear your LES singlets or gear if you have them!

That is all – see you in the am!

xo

Seanna