Buttresses

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Chartres cathedral in France.  I was barely 19, in a summer dress and backpack, gazing up at the gothic spire with my neck awkwardly against my back.  I’d never seen such magnificent height.  I remember that moment clear as the sky… I was living out my biggest dream, leading a bohemian college life in France, reading Hemingway in Les Deux Magots with my morning coffee, and dancing with French boys on the weekends.   I was on my own and I was brave…in fact, my dreams reached higher than the spires of Chartres and that was just fine with me…I would make them all my reality. 

I’m not sure where it happened, but somewhere between 19 and France and 32 and Jacksonville, I lost my bravery.  A few dreams have been pushed to the side and others have disappeared completely.  It was only this January, when I set a personal marathon record in Miami of 3:54, that I admitted how badly I want the ultimate novice runner’s high… I want to qualify for the Boston marathon.  Committing myself to running the 2012 Boston marathon and facing doubts about my racing speed has awakened me to the sad reality that I’ve been too afraid to reclaim dreams as my own.  I’ve allowed chances and opportunities to slip through my fingers simply because I was scared to hold on tight…scared I wasn’t smart enough, spiritual enough, fit enough, wealthy enough, pretty enough…and the list goes on.  Today, my fists are clenched, and I’m not letting this dream pass me…I dream of qualifying for Boston on October 9, 2011 at the Chicago marathon.  I have 185 days till Chicago, and although I’ve already started training (yes, it’s early training…I’m just a nerd like that) I have a long road of long runs, tempo runs, hill runs, and track runs ahead of me.  As if this weren’t enough work, I’ve self-imposed an additional training technique…journaling.  There’s one more dream I let go for the same aforementioned reasons…I dreamt of writing.  Despite a few scholarly publications and notable articles, I’ve never committed to writing “just for me”, giving a written word to the voice inside that’s been conjuring stories and ideas for years. So, in a way, this blog has become not only a journal to chronicle my training for Boston but a canvas for the words that have colored my thoughts on many long runs.  I’m hoping that this blog will be an exercise in running and writing.  In the past, when running was hard, I’ve walked.  When writing was hard, I’ve read someone else’s words.  I may not experience successes in running and writing at the same time, but hopefully, when one diminishes the other will peak.  For the next 185 days, I will run and not walk, and I will write and not read.

In retrospect, I overlooked an exceptional structure of Chartres cathedral.  In simple-minded awe of the towering spires and flamboyant stained glass, I failed to recognize the powerful feature of flying buttresses and a powerful metaphor for my life.  Heavy stone buttresses supporting lateral forces and a roof lacking adequate bracing were a necessary reinforcement for the buildings integrity.  Like buttresses, there have been many people in my life who have reinforced me and my dreams.  This blog will likely address most of them.  But for now, anyone reading this, anyone texting me to get out of bed at 4:30am, anyone helping me with boys, anyone sharing a dream of their own, anyone making me pasta, anyone letting me steal a nap is my buttress.