This weekend I did the Zooma Amelia Island “Seaside Challenge” originally slated for October of 2020. It’s a 5k “Lighthouse Loop” (around the apparently oldest existing light house in Florida), early Saturday evening followed by a half marathon the next morning, my first half of the Fall running season. It was actually supposed to be my 2nd half marathon of the season but you know what they say, if you want to make God laugh, just make plans.
A small weather event called Hurricane Ian spun up over the Atlantic and caused the cancellation of the first annual Clearwater Rock ‘n Roll race that was supposed to be held October 2nd and be our first half marathon this Fall. My running buddy was relieved because she hasn’t been training as much as I have, but I was not happy because I was ready! Having done a 15k race (mentioned in my last blog post), the previous weekend as my 9-ish mile training run. (Of course, my small inconvenience is nothing compared to those truly impacted by the devastating storm, as it turned out, and my hearts goes out to all those who continue to face hardship from it.)
In any case, after being deferred for 2 years due to COVID, the Amelia Island Zooma felt like the race that was just.never.gonna.happen. Then when my running buddy bowed out a while back and several plans to have others accompany me fell through, it seemed even more precarious. So I determined I would just go on my own.
I decided I could treat it as an exercise in independence (pun intended). Not exactly unprecedented to do a race outside of my home town, and stay overnight in a hotel alone, because I did it two weekends in a row last spring (as documented in yes, another blog post), but driving anywhere from the 3 hours 46 minutes seen below, to over 5 hours, depending on traffic, was a little further than I was comfortable doing solo. So I figured that would be part of the “challenge” of it all.
🤓
In my lifetime, I’ve not done too much traveling on my own but I’ve always admired women who have the bravery to do it.
I’ve also always been a little preoccupied with independence, maybe because I found feminism at such a young age and it went with my idea of what makes a strong woman. But certainly also influenced by my experience being “addicted” to a relationship with my first love and never wanting to feel that kind of awful dependence again (see blog posts “dangerous boys”, A LittleBitMore on the Magic Man and a poem called Mourning).
And so I challenged myself to do some things on my own, and I have a very clear memory of the first time I went to see a movie solo (the movie “Grand Canyon”) when I was maybe 19 years old. I was so proud of myself for doing it and I recall having a similar feeling another time going to dinner by myself. I also remember that I thought a lot about independence before I got married, because I had a small fear that I’d be setting myself up for having a man try to control me the way I felt my Dad did back when I considered myself quite grownup but was still living under his roof and his rules.
I even floated the idea to a (female) friend that maybe I should live on my own before getting married, because I’d never really done that, having always had roommates & living with David pretty quickly after we got together. She gave me the huge gift of her reassuring perspective and memory of how I was in college, often happily alone in my room studying or working on my writing, not clamoring to always be with other people and be entertained. Pretty independent, in other words.
Around the same time, when David was totally ok with me going to visit another (platonic, male) college friend, living in Brooklyn at the time, that clinched it for me; getting married didn’t mean giving up my independence and a certain amount of freedom that I found necessary for me to be happy.
Flash forward 20 years or so and I actually think David and I have evolved to be maybe a little too independent in our relationship (facilitated, at least somewhat, by not having kids together), and so we’ve talked about making a more conscious effort to spend time together doing things we both love like taking trails & boardwalks through the beautiful Florida mangroves or trying a yoga class together. He also promises he’s planning our much discussed trip to the Bahamas (they’re literally right there off the east coast, and yet we’ve never been), for next spring or summer.
But there are some things I love that he never will, so we cannot share, like running. And so I plan my races (2 more half marathons in November and 4 in the first 3 months of 2023 alone!) and try to make them even if it means going on my own. Because they make me happy and maybe that is the most fundamental thing about independence: taking responsibility for our own happiness, not looking for someone else to provide it.
Being in charge of our own happiness in life is sort of the bad/good news of being human I guess!
Beach and pool time (showing off the race tank top) before the 5k Saturday evening -
Showing off the 5k medal afterwards -
Sunrise before the half marathon this morning, and showing off the TWO medals afterwards (one for the half marathon and one for the “Seaside Challenge” for a grand total of 3 medals for the weekend) -
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