Recovery - Lesson in Running and Life

Well, hello world. Ah, feeling pretty good. This episode is about what I've learned in two different versions of recovery, both the one where you go to meetings and the one that you need to do after you run a race. And yesterday I did, I double-ogged air you. It is probably the hardest road race in at least the Kansas City area, if not wider. It is a 1.1 mile loop and you start at the top of the hill and you run a little over a half a mile down a very steep hill. It is black top, you get to the bottom, you run around a set of cones and then you run all the way back to the top and it's somewhere between 180 and 200 feet, 200 feet of elevation gain each loop but it's really about a half a mile so it's really steep and I'm not sure what hurts worse, running down it or running up it, but I love it. Who's the third year I did it, oh, and it's a six hour race. So whoever runs up and down the most and has the most completed laps wins. And I'm not really here to talk about the race necessarily, other than it really doesn't number on your body. You feel it during the race, you feel it after the race and you definitely feel it the next few days for sure. And I'm feeling it right now. But it made me think about how much different my recovery is now than the way it used to be. Both in the recovery from races and the recovery from addiction. And there's so many parallels in this. When I, you know, for both of these things, my first thing to think was I always wanted everything to happen really quickly. When I first got sober, I wanted to get back to living right away. I wanted people to forgive me, I wanted them to move on. I wanted to move on and just let like the past become water under the bridge. I wanted that relief of being changed before I had really done any of the work of changing. And after a race, I felt the same way I wanted to wake up the next day and just run again as if those miles didn't do anything to me. But recovery doesn't work that way, right? Whether it was my body, like healing after this long hard effort or my internal self, like my soul, healing after years of damage, both of these things take patience, humility, acceptance, willingness. These principles were supposed to live by. And it takes a little bit each day, not necessarily a lot, right? When I first got sober in early sobriety, you know, I had to learn that the pain I caused, it just didn't disappear because I wanted everything to be different or I wanted to be different. My actions, you know, my actions over the years created like real pain, real hurt and people were allowed to need time, even if I didn't want to give it to them, right? Forgiveness was, it wasn't something I could just demand of people because I had changed. It was something I could only hope for while I was continuing to live differently. That makes sense. And we have these different types of amends and this is where living amends come in. And I know this as a fact, that changed behavior is the truest form of a living apology. Words matter, they do matter, but words without action are thin. The real apology is how I show up today for people. It's being consistent. I got to be honest, I got to be dependable. I got to be willing to fix things, repair things, what I can without expecting immediate credit for it. And then sometimes that credit may take a very, very long time if it comes at all. And you know what, that's not my right to demand. If my actions cost enough pain and hurt that it takes somebody long or never to forgive me, what I have to be able to accept is that I know I'm doing the next right thing. I cannot change them, I can't rewrite the past, but I can do things differently to where I'm not adding to that damage. That has become one of the greatest lessons of recovery for me. And running has taught me a very similar lesson in a different language. When I first started racing in 2008, I made this mistake of trying to do too much too fast afterward. It was as if if I could just go faster, I could prove something and I wanted to get right back out there. And more than once, I ended up sick after races because I did not respect the recovery process. And I put my body through something very difficult and then I acted surprised when I needed the rest, when I needed time, when I needed to eat better, I needed more water, I just needed more care. You know, my body was really telling me the truth and I wasn't wanting to listen. You know, that sounds and is very familiar. In sobriety, life is telling me the truth also. My relationships, how I think, how I feel, all of that, including like my spirit needed time and the care. And I couldn't rush trying to heal without consequences, right? When I ignored how it works, like the process of recovery, I missed the lesson. When I tried to skip to step 12, when I was on step 2, I usually found myself right back where I was and I'd be tired, I'd be frustrated, I'd be irritable, discontent, humbled. But there is a way to get better. You just keep coming back. I keep coming back to meetings, I keep coming back to sometimes the same races, learn from my mistakes, I still make mistakes, they're usually new ones and that feels like progress. I like listening to old people and little kids because it feels like wisdom comes from two different places. It comes from experience, but it also comes from not knowing any better. And experience comes from, well, for me it came from getting things wrong and then paying attention to what I did and then being willing to learn. That is the best example in my own life of humility because people will tell you, I am not always the most humble person. I like to give myself compliments. There's a freedom in that. It's a different kind of freedom. Both of these recoveries have given me insight into who I am. Both show me where I'm impatient, when I push too hard, when I avoid rest, when I chase outcomes and where I still need to accept. I was slower this year and double locked there, I was slower this year. I used to care mostly about the finish line. The result, the pictures, the time, the Strava stats, Garmin, that proof that I had done something. Now I really try to enjoy the process far more than I used to. I spent a lot of time in that race on Sunday just listening to the birds, to other people, but it's out of my feet hitting the pavement. I still care about outcomes, but it's not the only thing that matters. I found that the more deliberate I am in both of these recoveries, the stronger I become in the long run. Rest, reflection, rigorous honesty, acceptance, willingness, consistency. These are signs of strength, not of weakness. It's how we build. It's how we heal. In these two ways, it's how we show up one day at a time, one mile at a time. And if you're wondering, I did win. Peace.