By CRS Community Leader Jodi Lewchuk
“Let it give your feet wings,” she said, and smiled.
In desperation, with about a month left in my training schedule for my first Boston Marathon, I was sitting across from someone I hoped could help me release the load I was carrying in my heart. It was weighing me down.
I mean that figuratively, of course, but as I entered the final days of preparation for the Holy Grail of marathons for endurance runners, I knew something wasn’t right. Something was holding me back. Running itself had told me so.
Oh, sure. Toronto has just experienced its coldest winter on record, which made for some of the most challenging training I’ve done in the three years since I’ve taken up distance running seriously. But I’ve run in frigid weather conditions before, and it didn’t slow me. In fact, it had made me stronger and faster. This time, something was different. Something was off. Something was wrong.
My coach had put together a plan for Boston that would stretch me in ways I hadn’t been stretched before, but nothing she asked me to do was beyond my potential. The time goal we set for the 20 April 2015 race was tough. But it wasn’t impossible. And yet the harder I worked to fulfill that potential, the farther away the target seemed. I was defeated by tempo runs. My finishing kick was often nowhere to be found. Worst of all, on Sunday long runs, which I usually look forward to, I would be labouring along, feeling like I was giving everything I had, only to look down at my watch and see a pace time that was at least 30 to 40 seconds slower than my usual “autopilot” speed.
Running, which for so long had been my place of refuge and strength and achievement, suddenly felt like the enemy.
For anyone not familiar with my story, I took up distance running after the end of a long-term relationship. I ran my way back to myself during that time, and discovered running was the perfect metaphor for life: both joy and pain are temporary, and if you keep running, keep pushing, keep believing, you always end up somewhere – often a place better than you ever imagined. I qualified for Boston in my first marathon the year I turned 40, and I saw my race times improve each and every time I toed the line. Running became my wellspring of confidence.
And so it shook me in a very deep place when that confidence was stripped away as I battled each and every workout on the road to Boston. I thought about scaling back my time goal. I thought about not going to Boston at all. I thought about quitting running altogether.
It took time, but I eventually realized that running 
hadn’t turned on me. It wasn’t trying to trip me up. Running was trying to tell me something. Running was trying to save me.
When you are the fittest you’ve ever been and there’s no medical reason for running slower than you did when you first started, it’s time to look elsewhere for answers. It’s time to look within.
If you ask me what my biggest strength is as a runner, I’ll tell you it’s my heart. There’s no doubt that I’ve conditioned my body to be lean and strong. I’ve also got an iron will. But I truly believe it’s my heart that propels me. It’s big and it’s deep, and when it decides to open to something — or someone — it does so wholly and fully and unabashedly. It flings open with abandon.
I can’t imagine living my life any other way; facing each day with such an open heart brings great rewards. It can also bring great heartache. And that’s precisely where I found myself as I entered the homestretch of my training for the 2015 Boston Marathon: bogged down in a heavy heart that was dragging my mind, and my legs, down with it.
Thus my plea to the person I entrusted with helping me release my burden. I told her I would do whatever was needed to leave it behind and move on. Her advice took me by surprise.
“Why would you want to leave something so special behind?” she asked me. “Wouldn’t it be better to find a place where its magic can always exist within you, inspire you, and open other doors? It doesn’t have to be a weight. Open your heart to it, and let it give your feet wings.”
It’s amazing what a different perspective will do. Carrying a memory wasn’t a problem; I just needed to carry the right parts of it in the right way.
The difference in my running was almost immediate. It’s like my legs woke up. I watched my pace times speed up run by run. I hadn’t left anything behind, and yet I felt lighter. I nailed my first tempo run. Going long started to feel fun again. And for the first time in the training cycle, I began to feel genuine excitement about lining up in Hopkinton for the race into downtown Boston.
All it took was someone to remind me of my own motto: “Head up. Heart open. Run.” Sometimes we say things and forget what they truly mean. But on the morning of the 119th Boston Marathon, I will open my heart with purpose. I will be grateful for everything that got me to the most legendary marathon there is — joy, tears, elation, pain, hills, valleys. I will be grateful to carry a memory that reminds me what it feels like to soar. I will fling my heart wide open and I will run where it leads me, fast or slow or somewhere in between, to Boylston Street and beyond.
It will be magic.
