My fears had become reality. I was in pain.
I arrived at the venue forty minutes early. I was nervous, surrounded by people who all seemed to be in much better shape than I was.
But the race wasn’t against them, it was against myself.
Fearing discomfort, I decided to run a hundred metres to warm up and get a sense of what awaited me.
Unfortunately, I was right.
When I stopped, my thighs gripped the bone to avoid collapsing, holding on so tightly they reached for muscles further up to survive. An intense pain at the base of my spine added fifty years to my age.
Twenty minutes before the start, there was a warm-up session on the programme, which I tried to follow while convincing myself everything was fine.
It wasn’t. The distress lingered.
Five minutes to go, I decided to stretch my psoas in an attempt to stop the tide from rising. It seemed to give me some temporary relief.
I got in line and reached the starting point, where three hundred people began running twenty seconds past ten.
As everyone spread out, I looked up at the sky and the clouds that painted the scene.
“The heavens won’t be laughing for long,” I muttered to myself, as I oddly tend to do.
Four hundred metres in, and I knew I was going to have to fight to finish this race.
I saw my parents and turned towards an unknown world. I only knew the way up to where they stood—after that, it would be an exploration.
On the first incline, the sense of freedom that came from running in the middle of the road filled my heart with happiness and adrenaline. Is there a more liberating act than this?
Far ahead, I picked up on clues left by other runners about the course.
I was way back.
But that didn’t matter, my goal was my own.
I kept doing the only thing worth doing in that moment: running.
Focusing on my stride, I tried to ignore how many people passed me, and how many I overtook. In a race, it’s easy to get caught up in others, but I stayed focused on what I wanted to achieve.
Three kilometres had gone by, though I felt like I’d run five or six.
New parts of my body were succumbing to the anxiety of falling apart. They clung to me with a strength I didn’t know I had.
Unconsciously, the thought came to me: “If you can’t run with your legs, run with your heart,” and so I did.
I slowed down, but I never stopped. To stop would be to die.
We continued through places I never thought I’d go, along paths where the ground wore down the ill-prepared like me. I was at kilometre four, and I couldn’t stop begging for the fifth to arrive.
I wasn’t breathing, just pretending to.
Luckily, the fifth kilometre finally granted my wish, and with it, the confidence of having made it halfway lifted my spirits. I was doing better than expected. I checked my watch and had a better time than in any previous race. Thirty-two minutes for six kilometres—four better than I’d hoped for.
In this new life, my body screamed at me, “This is what it means to push your limits! This is it, Tomás! Don’t slow down, go faster!”
So, I did.
Caught between the race and other thoughts, I spotted a runner I knew—the embodiment of my finished goal. I decided to give it everything I had and stay behind him.
I looked up at the sky again, but with none of the clarity to process anything. I looked for the sake of looking, as the jolts of my stride had made me lift my head in that direction.
There was just a kilometre and a half left.
I decided to look at the ground and focus, avoiding the sight of the finish line. I knew that as soon as I saw it, alarms would go off, and I wouldn’t be able to control my breathing.
Gasping for air and trying to hold myself together, I thought…
“Can I go faster?”
And I could.
I’d trained for this.
I’d trained so that, even at the end, when completely out of control, I could push my pace up a notch above the normal running rhythm.
I could do it.
But I didn’t.
I was going to meet my goal, and that was enough.
I ran a little more, and when I saw the finish line, I realised I was running underwater.
I crossed it.
It took me a while to come back to the surface, but I did.
Was I collapsing? Yes.
In pain? As soon as I stopped, I felt it.
Was it worth it? Hell yes.
I’d won.
I’d kept my word.
