I had just finished a 30K race (18.64 miles) in Sacramento.
Afterward, I was standing at the results board, grinding my teeth. “There’s NO WAY that guy would have beat me for third place in my age group if I had done hard speedwork for the last six weeks.”
That was 33 years ago. I was 51 at the time.
(Photo: The winners at a mountain bike race. Grateful thanks to photographer Ally Griffin on Unsplash. )
A woman happened to be standing next to me, and another woman approached and greeted her.
“Oh, HI! How ARE you? It’s so wonderful to see you! What race did you run? How did you do?”
“Hey, it’s wonderful to see you, too — it’s been too long! I ran the 50K and I placed third.”
“That’s WONDERFUL! Congratulations! I’m so happy for you!”
Now I was chuckling silently. I thought, “Okay, the universe is telling me to put on a dunce cap and go stand in the corner.”
It wasn’t hard to discern the lesson. I had been grimly plotting my revenge on the over-50 guy who had burned me for third, and here were these women, happily opening their hearts and having a grand time together.
A little over a decade later, I was running in the hills at a relaxed pace when a young woman passed me. I turned with a smile to greet her, but she motored silently past, her face set in a grim rictus of triumph. I could feel her trying to suck my spirit dry. I thought, “What a victory! I’m 62 and I’m jogging at 70% of my max heart rate, and she’s pretending that she’s won a race and buried me.”
I remember how I decided to try to counter the woman’s negative energy. I was reading Mark Allen’s Total Triathlete, by the six-time Hawaiian Ironman winner, and I recalled him saying that you can’t let other athletes “steal your energy.”
Okay, I thought, I’ll try that. I sternly focused all my attention on what I was doing, and when the woman passed 15 minutes later going the other way, my mind was so interiorized that I was barely aware of her. I could feel her predatory energy as strongly as before – and in grimly “defending my energy” I realized that I was, in fact, focusing on her more than I cared to, and I knew that I hadn’t succeeded in preventing her from getting under my skin
I realized that the only way to neutralize her negativity was to start pouring powerful positive feelings through my heart.
I began to pray for her. At first I was just grinding out the words mechanically, mouthing the prayers, but with fierce energy: “Bless her! Bless her! Give her health, love, strength, wisdom, and joy!”
Before long, the meaning of the words had become real to me, and a flow of love had taken fire in my heart. There was such power in that love that I no longer felt a need to defend myself. I was “defended” by the love that was flowing through me and bathing me with its light. I knew I had “won.” I continued to pray, no longer for her but for everyone I passed, just because the experience was so joyful.
Which shows, I guess, that guys can get it right, too, sometimes.
In 40 years of running, one of the most useful things I learned was that the barometer by which the body tells us about its needs is the heart. Whenever I closed my heart I found that it was harder to “listen to my body,” as experienced coaches advise. If I wanted to know if it was all right to do speedwork, for example, I could ask my heart. Then, if I listened sensitively, my heart would tell me what my body could safely and happily do.
Here’s another valuable thing I’ve learned: The goal of sports, and of art and life, is joy. Some people define joy as triumphing over others, standing alone on the victor’s podium, admired by all. But other people aren’t satisfied with such a narrowly self-focused definition; they’re looking for a joy that’s more inclusive, a joy that permeates their being – body, heart, will, mind, and soul, and that wants to spread out to bless others.
Those women meeting at the finish line and greeting each other gushingly knew something important. They knew that joy comes by expanding our hearts. Standing at the results board, they were experiencing success of a superior kind than I was imagining. The universe had reminded me where real success is found, in running and in life.
— Rambhakta