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January 30, 2010 08:26:14
Posted By gregwagner
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I know who I am. I’ve figured out where I want my life to go. As I have said, it’s a lonely path. Right now in my life, I’m ready to share that with someone. It was such a nice and secure feeling when someone wanted to make me a priority in their life. I love my friends and they love me, but I can’t force them to fill that void I currently have in my life. They have their own lives to live. I’m living mine and I love it. It would just mean so much more if I had someone to share it with, or just to have someone who was interested in hearing about my day every night.
Each of us has times when we feel alone. We all feel that way, and that’s why I believe that there’s no reason to avoid expressing how you feel. If we all feel that way at some point, why do we shun those emotions and avoid sharing them? We can all relate to the emotion, so why hide it?
Being vulnerable just means that we are human. It’s what makes us human. Each of us has been hurt. I hate it, but it only hurts so bad because of how amazing it was. I can wallow in misery, or I can smile at the fact that it hurts so badly. I can smile that I was in love or I was the most dominant pitcher in my town. My body may hurt to the point where I can’t sit down, but I can smile forever that I ran a marathon.
It’s scary to be open about things. It’s even scarier to fight for them when it appears they are slipping away. Do it. Do it and don’t even hesitate. If it’s something or someone who you are missing, there is no option. I’d rather regret something I did than didn’t do.
The regret of not taking an action weighs so much heavier than taking action. What if is a deadly mind game that only causes frustration and disappointment. That is where regret ultimately lies. So never leave a situation open to “what if.” If I put my heart out there fully, whether it be for a girl or for a baseball career, I have the comfort of knowing I did everything I could do. See your dreams and your fights through until the end. Every dream is worth fighting for fully, and everyone deserves to know how fully you care. Show them. Don’t be afraid of what is in your heart because if you are, you are always going to wonder “what if I wasn’t.”
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January 30, 2010 07:09:42
Posted By gregwagner
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I have been running consistently since May 2006, but today was a first for me that I naively thought would never happen.
I fell on a run. I face planted as I stepped from one sidewalk to another in town. The second sidewalk turned out to be a cylindrical curved drain and I lost my footing as soon as I landed in it. My fall was good. I only scraped up my right elbow, which is the best I can ask for since my dulled nerve sensations limits how painful the cut probably is.
I’ve run in snow and I have run in ice. I’ve run in heat and I have run in downpours. I knew that it was going to snow today, but it was too cold for the snow to do anything but fall. It stayed powder and never melted in the slightest. The snow stuck right to every surface, which made for zero traction. I lasted about 10 minutes until I fell, but each step became slicker than the last.
Call me an idiot (because I sure have called myself one), but I had to learn to fall at some point. This run is so important to me. I’m doing this in hopes of helping so many people, and honestly I have found joy in running again. It’s more than a refuge. I can run 15, 20 miles even without even thinking about it. After finding that sense of joy, I wasn’t going to miss a day of running. Besides, now I have a story to tell as I train towards my hopeful 3:30 marathon run in April. And maybe if I’m really lucky, I’ll get a scar on my right elbow. That way I will always have a story to tell. (Scars make for the best stories after all.)
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January 29, 2010 06:18:28
Posted By gregwagner
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One-hour, two-hour and three-hour runs have been put in the books. I was planning on doing my four-hour run today, but it has been a very off week.
My family has a blue spruce tree in our front yard. It would make for a perfect Christmas tree, except that it’s gotten about 40 feet tall...and it just collapsed on Monday. Somehow the tree landed perfectly though. It fell away from my car and right in front of our neighbor’s house. There was no damage at all. We just had to cut up a 40-foot tree.
It’s actually pretty funny that it happened because a week or two ago I was telling my Dad that I wanted to take an axe to fallen trees in the woods and train the way Rocky did in Rocky IV when he was in the Soviet Union. We borrowed a chain saw from a neighbor across the street and my Dad had a blast cutting up the tree.
The stump was huge, but none of the roots had come up with the tree. It weighed about 200 pounds, but it was caked with mud. I decided I would have my Rocky IV training moment and took a baseball bat and shovel to the stump to knock off as much mud as I could. I then decided to take a handsaw to the extensions of the stump to reduce the size and weight of the tree base. We have two huge piles of wood after cutting the whole thing up.
My Dad hasn’t had his van for a few days, but he has it back today and we are going to haul the mounds of wood to waste transfer today. For some reason trying to run for 4 hours the same day as transporting, what was, a 40-foot tree doesn’t sound like the smartest idea. I already had my Rocky training. I don’t want to get too involved in the role, haha.
Instead of training I am going to spend my day editing more of my book. The book has to get done too and now is as good of a day as I will be given since moving pile after pile of wood blocks and tree limbs is probably going to be a lot more exhausting than I imagine. Oh yeah, I have to unload them too. And actually, who am I kidding, it sounds pretty freaking exhausting already.
Editing my book is probably the best way to spend my day considering how much wood is sitting in my front yard right now. Besides, it isn’t going to edit itself and this way I’m not wasting a training day because the book has to be edited before I can go meet with publishers. I always try to make the most out of my day and this sounds pretty efficient to me. I get my book edited further, and I am kidding myself if I think this is an off day from training with that entire blue spruce to be loaded and unloaded.
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January 27, 2010 11:10:41
Posted By gregwagner
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I look at the hardships in my life as blessings in disguise. Sure, my disabled right leg may have felt completely broken when I first tried to run 5 miles. It simply meant that I had to strengthen my legs again. It’s been 3 weeks. I'm leg pressing 900 pounds like it’s nothing.
Lifting relieved the soreness in my quads, but then I realized how sore my hip was. It’s been 3 weeks doing hip abductors as well. Now my hip feels solid. I have increased my strength and my range on the machine. My body is healing and it's showing with dramatic results in the gym.
Therapy comes in many forms. My legs had always been strong, so I spent my time rehabilitating my arm and hand, hoping to get them as strong as my left side. I stopped developing my legs and my right side weakened again. My disability will exploit any weakness in my body. No matter how strong I get, my disability will find its way back into my body as soon as I stop working a certain part. That’s what I realize now. It may take more time, but simply maintaining where I am keeps my disability at bay. Doing that, my growth and development remains.
We start at the bottom. In the beginning no one is anywhere near where they want to be. Individually, you find pride in where you are because you know how far you have come. That’s your story. It’s compelling. It drives you, but no one else knows the journey you've been on unless you share it. The motivation you feel from overcoming your barriers is everything to you, individually.
All anyone sees is you today. My parents, who have lived with me being disabled for 21 years now, forget how challenging cleaning my shoes can be. Any two handed task is difficult to complete, but people forget my limitations I still have because of how far I have brought myself. I don’t live as a disabled individual. I’ve grown through my disability. It’s not a reminder for other people to see how much I have lost, but rather a gauge to show me how much I can gain.
We all deal with hardship. No one has any right to say who deals with worse because, like a disability, hardship is individual. The only thing we can do is put our next foot forward and keep pushing harder with each stride.
As great as it feels to be able to share your story and receive praise for where you’ve been, the true marvel is where you are today. People sympathize with me that I nearly died when I was 3. They feel bad that I limped and had to have surgery, but they cheer because I run marathons and have built myself to be the strongest man in my gym. The reason they smile is not because of my story, but because I am sharing it in hopes of making others lives better.
Where you’ve been is great, but the meaning behind the past spurs your internal motivation. Where it drives you to is what others see. No one has any idea how I run a marathon. They only see me cross the finish line.
Always push yourself. Keep moving forward. Get stronger. Grow with each stride. The journey gets you where you want to be. How you finish is what will be remembered. So, no matter how you run your race, always make sure you finish like a Kenyan. Even if I run a 5-hour marathon, I can take pride in the fact that I finished at Kenyan speed. And that's how people saw me finish.
Ultimately, It’s up to you though. How are you going to finish your race? How will you be remembered…and what will you be remembered for?
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January 24, 2010 10:02:07
Posted By gregwagner
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Running for two hours had been mentally draining for me, and it has been the mental exhaustion that has provoked physical fatigue. I’ve been training for marathons since 2007 and out of habit I have repeated the same courses to get the highest stamina-benefiting run that I can. I always make sure to run the two largest hills in my neighborhood, and I have realized that working those hills into my runs forces me to repeat my course.
I have been running the same course going on three years now. My mind is mentally burned out. I know the house numbers for each street. I know the mailbox that reads “Miss Rosefairy’s Moongarden” and the two wood barn mailboxes, too. I know the cracks in the street. I even know when the sidewalk color is going to change and for how many squares it changes for. I instinctively know how many strides it’ll take me to cross those squares, too.
I’ve seen the same sights year after year now…and nothing changes. I get so exhausted when I run because I know everything that is going to happen. I run up my street, always starting off too fast for my own good, I huff up a long, and deceptively steep, hill and eventually slow down to my paced speed by the time I hit the first speed bump on the next street. And this will go on for 5 miles.
I’ve broken up this course for my previous runs, but still have run it in small chunks. For my 3-hour run that I ran yesterday, I decided to start in a completely different spot. Instead of beginning my run in front of my house, I started in town and ran around Damascus for 90 minutes. I was just running any new route that caught my eye, and before I knew it I was halfway through my scheduled run.
I’ll occasionally run into town from my house. There’s a nice paved nature trail that many people run, bike or walk their dogs. The path is intercepted by a main road that leads to my neighborhood. So I typically turn and huff up the hill and head home from there.
Instead of running towards the route that I know even better than my ABCs, I ran across the road and finished the rest of the path, which is a trail I had never run before. I knew roughly how long it would take me to run the trail, but experiencing a new course sustained my energy for running instead of exhausting my mind with monotony.
The course eventually looped back to my house, but before I knew it I was at my house. I never got tired because I never knew where I was running. I always knew where I was, but for once I didn’t have a destination. I ran for the sake of running…and it felt so good. In fact, I never felt better.
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