The Runner

I met a woman today who ran a 100-mile race for fun.

Let me say that again: 100 miles for fun.

In case anyone is wondering: these miles were all in a row. She did not stop to sleep. It took her 36 hours. Did I mention that she did it for fun?

I sat there, dumbfounded, and listened to her flippant descriptions of a 100-mile race. Would she do it again? Maybe, she said. Probably. But the 50-mile races are reaaaally nice.

I could do nothing else but finish eating my cake.

An involved cake, I will add, that I made from scratch. And it was good. I'm good at baking. I am not good at running.

At the end of a workday, it feels as if I've run a 100-mile race. I usually drive 100 miles a day. I make a gazillion phone calls, type so fervently that I can see smoke snaking out of my laptop's keyboard, haul enough supplies and equipment to equate me to a pack mule, run stairs, and rush to pick up Ollie at daycare on time. Then it's throwing something together for dinner, eating dinner, feeding dinner, cleaning up dinner. I lift my 26-pound child over, and over, and over, and over. And over. Yet I still struggle to qualify for the Ironman.

The runner told me that she's an engineer, a drafting enginner. She calculates stuff and draws all kinds of shapes in a very precise way. I told the runner that I'm a nurse. I could never do what you do, she had said. I told her that I cannot for the life of me draw a straight line, so I could never do her job either.

And so it is in life, that we all have our gifts, and thank goodness that they're all different. After all, a runner needs to eat cake.