Non attachment. Such a huge component and lesson of the yoga practice, and one that I spent a large portion of my last week contemplating.

Last week I ran the 125th Boston Marathon. I ran Boston one other time, in 2007. I qualified to run this race in 2019 in Philadelphia. Normally, Boston is run in April on Patriots Day, but due to CoVid it was postponed until October this year. It was the most competitive year to get into the marathon, as the qualifying time period was extended (also due to CoVid), and the field of participants was cut down from 30,000 to 20,000. Needless to say, it was quite an honor for me to be accepted into the field.

Unfortunately, I hit some snags during my training. The August heat affected me greatly, and I was unable to complete a run longer than an hour during that month. In September, I started rebuilding, but did so through heel pain that nagged me daily. I knew I wasn’t set to run a personal best, but I decided to simply go to Boston and enjoy the experience.

My husband and I weren’t able to fly up to Boston until Sunday, the day before the race, because I was running teacher training that weekend at Love Evolution. I booked the earliest flight out of BWI, so that we would have plenty of time to get to Boston and the expo. Unfortunately, we woke up in our hotel at BWI to a text notification that our flight was cancelled and we had been rebooked on a flight on Tuesday. Every other flight was sold out, and so we jumped in the car and started the 7 hour drive- another less than ideal situation the day before you plan to run 26.2 miles! And I added that to my list of reasons to not be attached to a time, but to just enjoy the experience!

We made it to Boston, picked up my bib, and headed off to our dinner reservations. As soon as we placed our food order, the lights suddenly came on bright and the fire alarm started going off. Fortunately, we were notified that we did not need to evacuate, but our peaceful, relaxing pre-race meal turned into a meal with alarms blaring from the time we ordered until the time they cleared our plates. (Conveniently, the alarms finally stopped for the 5 minutes we waited to pay the bill)

Monday morning, I woke up eager and excited, and reminded myself mentally to take it super easy the first few downhill miles. But… like the best laid plans so far… it was challenging to really hold back during the rolling start with no crowds. Plus, I felt pretty good! Until about mile 13, when the heel pain was flaring up, and the legs were reminding me they hadn’t trained to RACE this race. I pulled out my phone, sent a text to my mom and Josh to be prepared for a drastic reduction in pace, and kept plowing forward.

I ended up finishing the race in 3:59.01. Not my best, by far, but also not my worst. (I think it ranked time wise as 9th out of my 12 marathons). Which was totally what I had expected, and I was happy with it- but then I caught myself feeling frustrated to not have run faster. I noticed, loud and clear, how attached I was to an outcome.

In the following days, when my heel was definitely expressing how unhappy it was with me, I reflected more deeply on attachment. I am definitely attached to being a runner. A semi-competitive runner… one who can run marathons and qualify for Boston in them. And it has been a struggle, as I wait for my appointment with an orthopedic specialist, to not run at all.

On the mat, we practice non-attachment to postures, how they look, which variation we do. For me, I often can embrace that. Yet this past week, in a slightly different discipline, I was thrown for a loop. And I also noticed how attached I can be to other aspects of yoga. To having people show up in my class. To leading successful teacher trainings. To receiving positive feedback when I offer a workshop or series or class. And it made me take a step back to investigate why I do what I do, and can I do it in a way that isn’t focused on an outcome?

And to take it one step further, how does attachment affect my relationships? My family? My friendships?

I can promise I don’t have an answer. Yoga asana is hard. But YOGA is harder. Harder than running 26.2 hilly miles on undertrained legs with an injury, for sure. Not even comparable. But if we practice every day, if we recognize our setbacks and learn from them, we show up, and we move through or past the obstacles that arise, we move one step closer to peace, to samadhi, to bliss. This is what it means to practice yoga. This is what it means to be human. This is the path.