Making a Difference -- Thank you
The hardest thing to deal with during this pandemic is the inaction. I feel best and most alive when I am making an impact, when I am productive. It is hard to convince myself that staying home and not doing anything is what’s best for everyone right now.
But it is, and it’s so damn frustrating. I get a mental boost from being outside. I love to go to work and make people smile. Being of service makes me feel complete. During the first few weeks of the country-wide shut down, I had a hard time coping. I felt many feelings I hadn’t in a long time.
I used running again, to cope with those feelings. In my first week of unemployment, I ran 120 miles. I had nothing else to do and running was a way to escape the news. It provided a sense of normal. It was an anchor I could hold onto. At least 2-3 hours of my day would be normal.
It wasn’t sustainable and I knew that. I just needed to use it for the time being, until I could manage my grief and accept what I was going through.
Running stopped being enough, like it usually does after using it as therapy for too long. So I had to try something else. I reminded myself what I am good at, what I like to do, and tried to come up with something that made me feel ok. That made me feel purposeful in this moment.
This is where Ithaca’s Quarantine Treadmill Ultra was born. I couldn’t do much on my own to help out local business. As much as I preach that, when you don’t have money coming in, I do not advise extra spending. Therefore, using what I had, time, energy and love of running, had to be cultivated in some purposeful way. I set up this event a week before it was set to go off and advertised like hell on my social channels.
That in itself was one of the most draining things I’ve ever done, simply because I don’t thrive online in a work sense. Sure, I can post silly social media videos or Tweet for a half an hour or so a day, but I love the part of my job that gets me away from the screen. I have had many offers to be a social media manager, and I’ve turned them down…though I did think for a long time about doing it.
It simply isn’t my passion to get paid to do that. I love shouting people out. I love doing the Trails Collective news show and tweeting about that when I remember. I enjoy podcasting and sharing that medium, however getting paid to do these things that are fun for me would take away the joy. This is how I still feel about running. Sure, winning some money or getting some free gear is nice, it takes money anxiety away and if I can prevent some chafe of mid-race catastrophe with proper gear sign me up…but a paycheck? A paycheck for bragging about myself or running fast? I just don’t know if I have that yet.
I don’t know if I ever will.
I like small connections. I enjoy checking IG and Twitter a few times a day for a few seconds just to say hello to people. I am not a scroller. I will forever enjoy reading blogs and long form content over short stuff. However, what social media brings to me is friendship, fun and creativity. It’s still 100% fun for me and earning money for it would turn it into a job, which is not what I want right now.
Spending 41% more time online last week advertising for something, even something I believe in and want so badly to succeed, was draining after a few days. I just don’t like spending all my time on social media, and right now that’s what we’ve got to do to make it. It’s not the comparison trap, I’ve made peace with how I am and really like myself. My mental health was just tired. My eyes hurt. All I wanted to do was cut a bagel and talk to someone over the counter. Thankfully, I have part time work to look forward to this week, which also helped improve my mood.
Going into our event, I went from “oh God I am really tired, why did I decided to do this?” to “this will be so much fun I cannot wait!”
After I got the hang and balance of social media and advertising, it became more manageable for the week (never full time!!) and I also went back to work for a few shifts. That flip, just having something to focus my energy on, was the game changer. Somehow, we decided to run outside instead of the treadmill the Wednesday before the race and got everything set up to do so. I realized that no matter what happened, we were raising some money.
We were making a difference.
The race format, 4.16 mile loops every hour, was something I’d never done. However, my body actually responded pretty well. It was like finishing a small race every hour, then I got to rest. Going slow and steady was really important, so my body never felt taxed. It took until about 6 loops for my legs to say they were tired and feeling the pounding. However, it wasn’t race ending. We, Amelia and I, had agree to stop after 10 loops, or 41.6 miles no matter what. We were relatively untrained and risking injury wasn’t what we were after. Each loop had a significant hill, and we ran half and walked half of them. We did race shoutouts for all the people who donated. We live streamed the event on the Trails Collective Facebook page and participated in the Zoom call with the actual race going on.
It was a day I needed. I spent the whole day outside. I pushed through when I could have stopped because “I wasn’t going to win”. I spent time with people (6ft apart) who were going to benefit from our run. I made a difference.
We raised over $1,500 from 30 doners. $1,500!!! I advertised for a week. ONE WEEK raising $1,500!!! We thought we might get 10 doners and raise a few hundred bucks. This was more than we could have imagined!
All the people who reach out, donated, shared, posted, called and texted us,
Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for coming together to help. Thank you for giving this to me. Thank you for believing. Thank you for helping me see that through tragedy and misery we can come together. We can be physically distant but socially connected. We can make a difference.
As my favorite character Sam Gamgee from Lord of the Rings proudly claims,
“There’s some good in the world Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”
