Discomfort

I lay in bed, fully clothed beneath the covers, my eyes closed, focus on my breath as the wave of nausea washed over me. Would I soon be reaching for the plastic waste basket I'd placed beside the bed and hobbling on crutches toward the bathroom or would I ride this wave out as I had the others preceding it? I breathed slowly and the wave subsided - made it again!

It is amazing to me, truly amazing how the body works and how our attention expands and collapses. In this state, feeling nauseous as I fought off some bug, my attention had shrunk to the size of a quarter; I could think ahead as far as the next breathe or cramp. When I'd gone to work my attention was as wide as a cloudless blue sky - I'd felt energized, expansive. Now chills mercilessly shook me as I waited, hoping to just ride out the inner storm.

My last minutes at work had been spent attempting to finish an email message that just had to be done if it was the last thing that I did for the work day. Composing words, entering commas, reading the draft challenged me to stay with it, hang on. The harsh glare of the screen over powering my senses; I'd turned off the over head lights and worked by the soft glow of the overcast sky. Now at home I lay still with my eyes closed. Reading, watching television, doing anything for amusement was out of the question. All I could do was endure the discomfort.

As I lay still I recalled two times recently that my attention had collapsed to the point of riding the breath. The first, and more recent, was two days after surgery when the pain surpassed the medication's ability to tame it. I'd not wanted to wake my wife and was using every trick I could think of to move my focus from throbbing foot to anywhere else - I scratched my genitals, bit the flesh between thumb and forefinger, tugged at my hair, over and over for what seemd like hours, finally calling out to my wife who called the doctor who suggested that I take two Advil with each tablet of Oxycodone. That did the trick and the discomfort passed.

The second was in the last eight miles of the JFK 50 in November. I was ahead of goal pace and running pretty well when my foot really started to hurt, at first quietly letting me know that it was there and then with each stride growing in intensity until there was no relief. My wife, Sharon, ran easily at my side, running me in from 38 miles, a ritual that we enjoy. We'd been chatting freely, enjoying the afternoon until the pain took over. At that point I needed only her presence as comfort and my awareness on my breath. I couldn't follow the conversation, no matter how light. For the remainder of the run my focus was one step, one step, one step and the breath flowing in and out.

The protagonist Smith, in Alan Stillitoe's Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, reflects that every run is a life, "a life as full of misery and happiness and things happening as you can get really around yourself." I think that this is especially true in the world of ultramarathons. Every run is a life that has seasons of joy and euphoria and struggle and discomfort. When the struggle and discomfort come, which they will, the runner can quit or find a way to ride it out until it passes - it will.

It's easy to remember this when one's attention is vast - the trick is to remember this in the middle of the night at mile 75 when the finish feels as if it will never come. Here's to remembering it then and to riding the breath!