You had me at 30 more seconds

I have a confession to make.  I'm in love my mentors.  

I didn't see this coming.  I remember – distinctly – the first time that one of the mentors said, "You can do it."   I didn't feel encouraged.  I felt annoyed.  I could not do it.  Did this woman not notice that my legs had become pistons of pain that weighed roughly twice what an elephant eats each day?  I had been doing this for a week – a week!  No, I could not do it.  In fact, I was at that point wondering what would happen if I just sat on the ground and waited until someone brought me something cold to drink and a replacement for the lungs that I clearly had misplaced somewhere back around the first interval.

"I know you don't believe me, because I didn't believe my mentors either, but when you are doing intervals where you run for four minutes, you'll remember this and be surprised that two minutes felt like a long time.  I promise."

At least, that is what I thought she said.  I didn't really hear much after "run for four minutes". I was too busy wondering why teleportation hadn't been invented.  I would have thought that breaking the laws of physics was a piece of cake compared to this whole running thing.

Six weeks later, I ran my first four minute interval.  My mentor, Felicia, was beside me. 

"How are you doing?" she asked. 

"I might be dying" I answered.

"No you're not.  You look great."

And she was right.  I actually did look pretty good and I felt even better.  The four minute interval, while making me question my general sanity sometimes, made everything else seem a little easier.   My knees didn't hurt so much when we started out.  I had learned that if I stuck with it, mile two was often easier than mile one.   Felicia was right.  I didn't tell her that, of course but I think she knew.

Now that I'm in my second NOBO, I follow the mentors around like a first grader looking for extra stickers from the teacher.  I ask them questions and have been known to smile when they tell me to push a little harder.   I've learned who will keep me on track and who lets me slide a little bit.  Each one of the mentors has made their own journey to this place.  There are trail runners who have secret names and seem to revel in really bad weather.   There are distance runners who hang with us NOBOers because they remember how it started.    There are runners who are only a NOBO session ahead of us and know on a visceral level how hard we are working.

Wednesday night's run was a challenging push through a hilly, twisty course that put me back into my pain zone.  I watched as Neena ran ahead to check on the group and then back to check on us at the back, easily doubling our distance.  She sang songs to make us laugh and somehow managed to time the course so we were always running as the hills came up.  She asked about individual pains from sore feet to wobbly knees and urged us to notice how much better we were doing.  

"You can do it" she said. 

You know what?  She was right.  I can.