I feel a certain pride in this field. It’s where I bust my butt every morning.
The Endurance Run is one of my favorite things we do at my PLS bootcamp. It’s 50+ minutes of perpetual motion. You start with quick-three foot ladders laid out over 100 yards down the football field. Then you go back down the field doing high knees, crab walks and hopscotch. Then you go back up the field shuffling through dummies, then bear crawling for 20 yards. Then you sprint forward and backwards through a zig-zag of cones to the end zone. When you’re done on the field, you run the stairs of the stadium. When finished, you run past the stadium and do 20 pushups. Now this is where is got interesting: We then ran the loop road around Madison Central High School (we only did it once). I don’t know how far it was but it was probably 3/4 of a mile at least. We then reentered the stadium and lifted 25 lb. plates over our heads and in front of us. We then ran to a set of hand weights and did 20 jumping jacks. We then did a lap on the track (1/4 miles), stopping once to do 10 burpees. Then we started it all over again.
There is no stopping. There is no resting. I completed it three times.
It was a perfect metaphor for today. I taught my class, wrote four ideas, drew one of them, taped a radio interview and then went to a photo shoot for the Diabetes Foundation of Mississippi. I also returned several phone calls and sent some invoices. I’m about about to head to my son’s soccer game.
There is no stopping. There is no resting. I’m still trying to complete it.
One thing I learned when running a marathon is that you have to learn how to rest while you are moving. There are those moments — like when you are headed downhill — when you can allow your heart rate to lower a bit. Today, after my radio interview, I went outside and sat down on the curb of the radio station and made some calls. It was the first chance I had today to catch my breath. I took several deep breaths and felt a moment of peace.
Today’s Endurance Run was tough but excellent training for what I had ahead of me. Sometimes life is like that. You just have to learn how rest on the fly.
I’m just thankful I didn’t puke.