Setting My Own Pace

I have this friend who was a cheerleader in high school and is a world-class athlete. She’s one of those happy-go-lucky people who wakes up early in the morning in a good mood with perfect hair. She’s the type of person who goes on long runs in 100 plus degree heat and instead of dragging with exhaustion by the time she gets home, she’s literally skipping in the air, picking up speed, as if she could go on forever and ever. The best way to describe myself is to say that I’m not her. I don’t wake up early in the morning in a good mood with good hair. In fact, I refuse to wake up early in the morning at all, and in fact, rarely make any public appearances before 11 a.m.

One time I went on a backpacking trip with my world-class-athlete friend and several of her equally tough women friends. They promised me that it was going to be an easy to moderate hike, but I should have known better. Seven or eight hours into the hike, with my legs cramping, the straps of my backpack burning into my shoulders, I collapsed on the ground.

“I can’t go on any further,” I said valiantly. “You go on without me. I don’t want to hold you up. I’ll just set up camp here and catch up with you when I can.”

Well, that’s not what really happened. What happened is I collapsed on the ground and hoped they wouldn’t leave me behind. My world-class-athlete friend, being the world-class-athlete that she is, dashed off ahead, dropped off her backpack at camp, and heroically rushed back to carry my backpack the rest of the way for me. It was a little embarrassing, but at least I didn’t have to have an emergency helicopter fly in to evacuate me from this relatively flat, easy to moderate hiking trail.

The main thing I learned from the trip, was, aside from the fact that I should never go hiking with world-class-athletes, was that if I ever wanted to get anywhere, I was going to have to learn to go at my own pace. When we had first started off on the hike, I had gotten so tired trying to keep up with my friends, that later on, not only couldn’t I keep up with them, I couldn’t catch up to them without extra help. So, when it was time to go back home, I set out three hours earlier than my friends so I could get a head start and set my own pace. This time I started out more slowly than before. I hoisted my 45 pound backpack onto my back and started walking up the mountainside trail. I took one step at a time. I ignored the towering trees and the beautiful, sweeping mountain views around me and concentrated on picking up one foot and placing it down in front of the foot ahead of it. I stared at the little patch of ground beneath my feet where I was walking and listened to the satisfying gravelly crunch that each footstep made. Just like a recovering alcoholic whose credo is “one day at a time”, I thought to myself, if I can just take one more step, I’ll make it. I thought of the death marches some of my ancestors had gone on during World War II in Poland, and also imagined that I was, perhaps, some heroic hiker who had broken her ankle on the trail and was struggling back to camp. These visions kept me going for a little while, but eventually I just fell into the rhythm of the steps, not looking ahead of me to see how far I had to go and not looking behind me to see how far I’d come. It was just one step, then another step, then another step. Eventually, it became a kind of meditation, until I felt like I could go on forever, as long as I didn’t look up to see how much or how little progress I had made.

Of course, I didn’t go on forever, and my friends did end up passing me up and waiting for me at the parking lot for a couple of hours. But in the end, I made it back, hardly having to think at all about how to do it.