The 26.2-mile meditation.

The marathon is just another metaphor for life lessons.

Not the usual. Run slowly, don't sprint, life is a ____________. Yes, marathon.

I'm referring to the metaphor that teaches you that to really know something is to experience it. Yet after the intial go (whatever you may have stepped out to do), the unknown is gone and it's much easier to pace yourself than to go all out sprinting, after all, it almost killed you that first time. If you've run a marathon, you can visualize that statement, it literally almost killed you. Be it the last 4, or 10 miles. Or let's be honest, maybe the whole thing.

I recently read an op-ed about this exact idea, the title I appropriately stole, a 26.2-mile meditation from the Boston Globe. The idea is that balancing the experience you've learned with the desire to out-do yourself in the next succesive endeavors is the art of it all. Thus, the meditation.

My take:

It's irrational to register for a marathon, truly. The body isn't intended to run 26.2 miles and evolution (okay, society) has only further developed our inclination to lounge like lizards, couch potatoes, or hibernate like bears, etc. than to run for hours. Plural.

However, it's just that irrationality that drives marathoners. The tenacity and grit it takes to overcome the societal force that says, "Why don't you just stay in with me and watch an episode of Jersey Shore. Snooki is going to something really crazy tonight!"

Except I prefer to be the one making the moves and not contributing to Snooki's irrational paycheck. Moreover, this meditation has taught me to just relax, to enjoy it. The goal shouldn't be to prove to others, but only to yourself. If you can do that, you've mastered the art of something else, perhaps even bigger.

For clarity, I've defined irrationality, the main focus of my meditation, here.

Irrationality:
         a. Not endowed with reason.

b. Affected by loss of usual or normal mental clarity; incoherent, as from shock.

c. Marked by a lack of accord with reason or sound judgment

Running with Olives.

I knew marathon training would be tough in a town that is compact like an armario. Training could be mindlessly repetitive, and aptly I'd probably feel akin to a control subject in a rat race.

The problem being my natural tendency to sprawl. A tornado, as my sister phrases it, is my greatest by-product. To those unknown to this phenomenon, it's a pile of shit deposited wherever I have been. And this same spirit applies to running, excepting the deposit of shit. I love to sprawl wherever my legs will take me. Which in Baeza meant past a cathedral or two, up and down the curving brick streets, out to olive oil factory row, past the football field and back home. One hour could easily be burned, but sprawling like this isn't captivating after the first several months. I was like the rat who had already found the cheese, the chase lost its appeal, quickly.

Until, that is, I found another route. Running uphill, once again, I kept running even when the pavement ceased. It turned out to be Baeza's best trail, one that cuts through the olive trees and loops back into Baeza after 5k. An old memorial is among the sights along the way, but more interesting are the occasional workers shaking down the olives (who have since disappeared, the olive oil season is over). It's the essence of Baeza, especially with the old couples strolling through hand in hand.

Fun fact: 10% of the world's olive oil production comes from Jaén province (the smaller province within Andalucía, where I live). If you look at a map, it's quite impressive.