In awe

Last couple weeks, a recurrently theme and more like a question to myself, was what am I going to do next.

I do know and at the same time not know. I could fake an answer, but I cannot to lie to myself.

For running, I have a long to-do list. I always wish I could share it all. I call it my rainbow table because it is in multicolor of order of importance of which race I want to do. I do keep a year or two of races on here, though the list is not as pretty.

While the list is like the most practical things of when the rubber meets the road, it sometimes does not immediately tell the bigger picture.

That is – when I look at my list, instead of it giving me excitement, it sends me a feeling of dread and being overwhelmed. Maybe I am doing too much.

I got to remind myself — The reason why we all do something is because we love it and passionate about something. At 50000 ft, I do love running. Even down to the street level, I do love it – like if there is a weekend 5k or 50k I do it.

As a matter of fact, this coming weekend, there is a 50k, called Redeye, and I signed up. It is called Redeye because it will take place on New Year day, after a whole night of celebration, and the race assumes no one has time to sleep. I am running it like it is a local 5k. It is local to me. It will be on the same course as one I did my Devil Dog 100. I told my friend Caroline, I had that course memorized. My feet would know where to go. She was wondering if I am ready for it.

The last few days, the top things on my mind is not so much if my body is ready for a race, which normally is, but much more what I am doing with myself on a more fundamental level.

This kind of questions pops up to me from time to time, especially right after a big race. Just like last time back in May when I had soul searching questions, I’d reread my older blog posts. They helped. I reread last year vision statements (or new year resolutions – the ABC. They helped.

What is ABC? it is not an accronym. It is just the name I gave to a series of blog posts at the beginning of 2022. The first one started with A, then B, so forth. I found time and again rereading them, reset me. They made me feel better. The gist of it is as follow.

I realize something of what kept me going this year and the last few years is hope. My hope rests on that I will improve and I will get to do greater things even though I am not there yet.

The fact is 2022 was not that great when I planned it. Nor has it been since the start of the pandemic. It is like I could not do anything. Now the pandemic is kind of over, I am asking what 2023 will be like. Could I plan to do something awesome? That I am kind of don’t know any more. Maybe I lost the meaning of what awesome is. Maybe that what 2023 is for me to find that out.

This is what I thought awesome used to be.

I mentioned some bigger things I wanted to do — some of them are near impossible, but some are definitely doable. I wanted to run across America, to run across Tennessee, to hike the Appalachian Mountain, to travel to Napal and do the trek there, to visit Alaska and paddleboat there, to run a marathon in Sydney, and maybe some day run around the world.

Granted I am doing none of these next year or even the next few years. I haven’t done any of them this year or last year. The easiest on the list is probably going to Alaska or Sydney. I haven’t done them because of the cost.

But I settled something closer to home. I am planning to do a marathon in Toronto. I signed up already. It is set in May. I got one of my friends, well Craw team member, (who lives near there) to join me. Caroline, also excited when I told this to her. Not sure if she is serious about following me to Toronto. I plan to mention the trip to the rest of my Craw team maybe, maybe, they would too, join me in Toronto.

What is Craw? Craw is (or was) a virtual race in which we run around the world from the comfort of our home. We are about two weeks away from finishing. Since the theme is running around the world, we should at least do some traveling. I set Toronto my destination.

Back to the bigger picture. When I wrote up my race recap (twice), I came to the question, what will I do next. My answer and I did not want to say at the time, was same old same old. Basically same as we always done. This year was like last year. Next year will be like this year. We race.

I was asking myself where is my excitement now. Unlike 5 years ago, I was brimming with joy then. It was until I reread my vision statement. Yes, there are bigger goals out there. And doing these tiny goals maybe in some ways gets me to the bigger ones or at least kind of replace them. It is just like doing the Craw — none of us will ever get a chance to actually literally run around the world, but if we imagine it, we do and could run around the world even from our own home. Yes it is not the same, but the illusion could get you pretty close. Doing the small goals, we could imagine ourselves doing the bigger ones.

I will leave it as that for now. I don’t have the answer. We try our best to find our next step.

All said and done, I hope this helps me and others to come up with their new year resolutions. By the way, I need to think up some. Happy new year!