The Runner Who Beat the Storm

A friend of mine ran an ultramarathon once through a mountain pass. Fifty miles. Ten thousand feet of climb. He trained for a year. He arrived at the start line in the best physical shape of his life. He was, he told me afterwards, more prepared for that race than he had ever been for anything.

Somewhere around mile thirty-two, a storm came in that had not been forecast. Not a shower. A real one — wind, hail, temperature dropping ten degrees in twenty minutes. Three runners ahead of him turned back at the aid station and were driven down. He kept going.

He crossed the finish line six hours later, hypothermic and delirious. He does not remember the last mile. He does not remember the medal. When I asked him, later, what he had been thinking during the storm, he was quiet for a while.

'I wasn't thinking about the finish,' he said. 'The finish was too far away. I was thinking about the next telephone pole. I would tell myself: run to that pole. When I got there, I would pick the next one. That was all. Just poles. For eighteen miles.'

This is the entire secret of resilience, and everyone knows it, and no one uses it. The finish line breaks you. The next telephone pole does not.

Most of what defeats us — a difficult year, an illness, a grief, a stretch of work that will not resolve — defeats us because we insist on carrying the whole distance in our head. We wake up on Tuesday and immediately calculate how many Tuesdays remain until this is over. There are too many. The number crushes us. We do not even leave the bed.

The people who make it through are not stronger. They are shorter-sighted, on purpose. They have trained themselves not to look at the finish line. They look at the next telephone pole. Get to it. Look at the next one. Get to it. If a storm arrives, look at the next one anyway. Get to it.

This is not a slogan. It is a physical practice. When the distance becomes too much, you must actively refuse to compute the total. You have to say, out loud if necessary: 'That is not my problem. My problem is that pole.'

The finish line will still be there when the last pole is behind you. You do not need to keep it in your pocket the whole time. You only need to be honest, this hour, about which pole is next.

Run to that one.