On Patience and Trusting the Process
I’ve been running for 12 years now, taking it seriously the last 6-7. “Taking it seriously” means believing I’m an athlete and doing (most of) the things to help facilitate happy and healthy running.
In that time, I’ve had my share of ups and downs, mostly brought on by not doing enough strength training or forgetting that I’m not 24 anymore.
Suns out, guns out.
The latest wave of this was last month. “It’s not about avoiding the waves, it’s about learning to surf” has been my mantra in overcoming challenging times, and this was one of those. I bailed on BolderBoulder on Memorial Day weekend, thinking that was an overcorrection. My partner Kate steered me in that direction, and I’m quite glad she did.
My big goal is at the end of the summer (Grand Traverse 40 miler), and she reminded me it wasn’t worth risking it so early in the summer and setting myself back. I ended up taking 9 days off running, and have been building back verrrrry slowly with 3-4 mile runs every other day, and getting after it on the bike.
As I write this, I’m sitting in Tahoe staring at the mountains in Olympic Valley/Palisades, a place where I thought I’d be racing a 26k this past weekend. A race I love, but didn’t get to race. There will be other races. I’m grateful to be able to run even 5-6 miles while I’m here, on some of the most beautiful trails on the planet, and where I became a trail runner.
While living in Boston in 2016/2017, if you asked me where I ran trails, I’d have answered like a good Bay Area resident by saying, "Marin and Tahoe.”
I was more at peace with this injury cycle (formally a TFL tendinopathy and some really tight quads/weak glutes) than ever before, (mostly) confident that if I gave it time and did the PT work, I’d be back up and running soon. There were a couple days that I didn’t believe that (Kate and my PT will confirm), but here we are. Over a month later, and I’m nearly on the other side of it.
MORE IMPORTANTLY - I’m thrilled to be in my “bet on yourself” era. I left my full-time job in early June, launched Long Run Labs Podcast a week later, and am continuing to build a business with a couple of good friends which I’ll share more about soon 👀.
As I wrote about in this
update, I couldn’t do it without your support! I’m thrilled with how the launch of Long Run Labs went, so if you’re into the business of the outdoor industry, check out the new pod!
If you’ll be in Olympic Valley for Western States this week, I’d love to say hello!
— Jon Levitt, Host and Creator of For The Long Run