Settling.

Training cycles direct you. The workouts, the data, the filler, and the recovery all pave your path. I've pushed through the stages and faced the challenges before. Sometimes you face forward. Sometimes you face the proverbial music.

Earlier this spring, for example, I followed the cycle to a handful of start lines and looked out, unsure of why the clarity of the road ended.

I had to find my way.

The resolve resonates, although differently, from my experience last fall. In the cycle for CIM, the road and I shared a symbiosis. I felt unstoppable. Suddenly I felt overcooked. And the road led me to rest. I comprehended months before the marathon that I wouldn't toe the line. In that sense, training directed me to find solace in place of finding bitterness.

This week--another race week for what has become an annual summer dabbling with trail 50Ks--I felt nearly certain the training helped me pave the road to Pacifica. Even if it was a fairly ugly cycle by my standards, the workouts came together and I judged the data to indicate the presence of endurance and fitness. The recovery, I hoped, had amounted to sufficient reduction to provide freshness or lift.

Even my tumble last Saturday--an aimless face plant on a shady section of the Robie Trail above the confluence--and the subsequent scabbing, swelling, and stitches didn't fully derail my determination to head to Pacifica this morning. After all, it wasn't overuse injury. The contusions, surely, would take a toll, but they couldn't detour my road. 

But as the week unfolded, I lost the road. The most severe injury (the elbow) remained the least of my concerns. I'd neglected (in the attention paid to the elbow) the impact sustained to the left knee. I even got an x-ray. With negative results, and a nice conversation with the general practitioner, somehow these two issues obscured the developing issues in the hip (the second of three impact locations). 

By Friday, the dull ache on short runs clouded everything. I had to find my way again--only I couldn't. Like a coastal fog, the uncertainty settled in dense pockets and locked me in limbo.

And just when I thought I'd made peace with letting it go, I found the inner compulsion I needed and fervently pushed it aside! 

It was on a walk with the family. Chatting as we do, I fleshed out the possibilities of following through and seeing the cycle to its terminus. I felt an energetic life, and I told myself I could do it--all I had to do was start the process and the momentum would take care of itself. After all, hadn't I always managed through big events like this? I wondered if I should call my mate--a fellow runner I earlier cancelled on--to again offer to drive to the race. 

For a moment, I saw it! The way forward!

And then my son, slightly confusing all day, cried from the stroller, puked on his shoes, and decided for me.

---

The training doesn't direct you. The road is not a mystery. 

You embrace the love near you--especially when one has traded his vomit-saturated shirt for your arms and a look of naive bewilderment--and you walk forward with all the health and happiness you can find. 

Because you make the road. And life is not a race.