Pebble in the Shoe
A few weeks ago, I ran my first ultra race. My personal goal was to run as many miles within a twelve-hour period with completing at least 32 miles. So I set out on this goal one 2 mile loop after another, just me and the question of how much I had in me.
I hate to admit but pretty early on, something started to hurt….actually everything hurt but specifically my feet. It wasn't dramatic, mostly a pain moving to different areas of my body with a solid presence in my toes. Every step had a little edge to it. A different flavor of pain. My mind did what minds do: it started writing the narrative. I wonder if it's a blister. Maybe a bad one. Ick! there might even be blood. Maybe I am losing a toenail…or all of them.
I had a choice. I could stop, sit down at the aid station, take off my shoes and socks, and evaluate the situation. Or, I could keep moving, pretending the pain did not exist and hope it went away or eventually my body would just become numb to it all. I made the choice to keep moving. It was a timed race after all! I told myself I was being tough, that I would deal with it later. But if I am being honest here, that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was fear. I was afraid that if I saw the damage to my poor little toes, I would have to acknowledge it. And once I acknowledged it, I was pretty sure I would talk myself into quitting. I had made a commitment to myself to at least complete 32 miles and I was not stopping! A blood-soaked sock or a ruined toe would hand me the perfect, reasonable excuse to quit. As long as I didn't look at my feet, I could keep going.
So for hours I carried on..
What Was Actually in My Shoe
When the race finally ended, and after completing the 32 miles, I sat down, untied my shoe, and pulled it off.
There was no blood. No blister the size of a quarter. No missing toe nails. No catastrophe.
There was the smallest of pebbles.
One small piece of grit, sitting exactly where it could irritate me for hours. If I had stopped at any point, taken thirty seconds to shake out my shoe, I would have found it and fixed the problem. Instead, I spent a huge portion of my race managing discomfort, and worse, managing a fictional injury I had built entirely in my head.
I knew better. I knew that in these situations you need to address discomfort right away before things get big or even out of control. I choose, to my own detriment, to avoid it.
What Do We Avoid, and Why?
I think we all have shoes we refuse to take off.
It might be the budget we haven't looked at, the conversation we keep postponing, the health symptom we are hoping will resolve on its own, or the honest assessment of whether a habit is still working for us. We feel the discomfort, and instead of investigating it, we build a story around it, avoid dealing with it, and keep running.
Why do we do that?
Because looking makes it real. As long as we don't examine the problem, it stays in the realm of "maybe" or “it’s not that bad”.
Because we fear what the answer will demand of us. In my case, I was afraid the truth would force me to quit. We often avoid information not because we're sure it's bad, but because we are afraid of what this will then require of us.
What Becomes Possible When We Look?
When we take a look, evaluate, and reflect, we get options:
We might find the problem is actually not what we had originally thought.
We might find it's real, but manageable with a small adjustment.
We might find it's serious, and stopping is the wise move, not the weak one.
In almost every scenario except the last, we can still reach the end goal, often with less suffering along the way. And even in the last scenario, we'd be stopping because of the truth rather than because of a story.
So here is what I leave you with:
Take a moment. Sit down. Take off the shoe.
You can still finish the race. You'll just finish it lighter.
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