By Guest Blogger Alicia Gestautas
Running is a physical sport of endurance and often, sheer determination. With that, it is also a metaphor for life. When I first started running, I did it as a mere escape in high school. I didn’t have a consistent plan so when I got stressed over boys, grades, friends, and my parents, I’d lace up my shoes and head to the high school track five minutes from my childhood home. “Where are you going, Alicia?” I was asked by my mom. Often, I knew it was to run, but in my head, it was a mind escape. A rhythmic pounding on the track field would often put my thoughts in calibration with my stride. Once done with my haphazard few miles, I would wipe the sweat from my forehead and think, I didn’t know where I was going, but in that period of running, I found where I needed to be.
Running is a physical sport of endurance and often, sheer determination. With that, it is also a metaphor for life. When I first started running, I did it as a mere escape in high school. I didn’t have a consistent plan so when I got stressed over boys, grades, friends, and my parents, I’d lace up my shoes and head to the high school track five minutes from my childhood home. “Where are you going, Alicia?” I was asked by my mom. Often, I knew it was to run, but in my head, it was a mind escape. A rhythmic pounding on the track field would often put my thoughts in calibration with my stride. Once done with my haphazard few miles, I would wipe the sweat from my forehead and think, I didn’t know where I was going, but in that period of running, I found where I needed to be.
Some years
later, in Atlanta, Ga, to escape my college life and have some serenity, I’d
get in my car and head off, hours out of town. The question first asked by
roommates, “Where are you going, Alicia?” My answer was always, “I don’t know.”
I’d pack up my golf clubs or running shoes and fill my tank with gas and off I
went. One time I drove three hours to the north Georgia mountains to run. I
didn’t run far and I didn’t have a plan, which was part of the excitement of it.
Again, running was apprehending the truth of my life more than it was for the
physical benefits. In those runs, I fell in love, I wrote books in my head, I
daydreamed about trekking distant mountains, I solved math problems, and most
of all, I got to know Alicia, in all her quirky existence.
At 36, I
write this with my three children often staring at me and asking, “Mommy, where
are you going?” Sometimes I know, sometimes I don’t. I’ve run 13 half marathons
and 2 marathons. In those races and training, I’ve told myself someday I won’t
have to hear about my son’s butt jokes (but I’ll miss them at the same time),
I’ve discovered how to make Julia Child’s Coq Au Vin, I’ve (sort of) overcome
my fear of toads during monsoon season, I’ve forged friendships that I know
will last a lifetime…all because of running.
A year and a
half ago I joined TRP. I did it for a change of pace and to mix up my morning
solo runs. Subconsciously, I did it because a lot in my personal life was
unfolding and I didn’t quite know what to make of it. The ‘where are you
going?’ question needed an audience and feedback and advice. I met the most
amazing friends, ones who not only laughed with me, but gave me amazing
strength when at times I think it was lost. As someone who lives a very open
and in-living color life, keeping a large part of me hidden wasn’t easy.
Where am I going? I start a new job soon.
Also, after nearly 18 years with my husband, we are looking at an amicable, yet
very painful and difficult separation. Running has been my sanity, my saving
grace in all this. It has kept me grounded when often, I couldn’t find the
ground for my feet to meet the pavement. So while I don’t quite know where I’m
going, I’m not lost, I’m just taking a very long and winding road to get there.
And like running, I will reach my destination.
