The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about time. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!
The ancient Greeks had two words for time. Chronos is their word for incrementally measured time, the origin of our words such as chronology and chronometer. But kairos has a special meaning. When time is not measured by a set interval of present to past but rather when time is measured by importance, by impact, by significance in relation to the continuing elapse of happenings, it is said to be a kairos event.
It’s an April morning, some years ago, and I stand with about 100 other runners, shivering with cold and adrenaline-driven excitement on the starting line of the Leona Divide 50K Ultramarathon running trail event. Leona Divide is in the heart of the Santa Clarita valley in the western Mojave Desert in Southern California. The early morning temperature is in the 40s but all of us runners know that the temperature is going to rise by at least 40 degrees by the time we finish more than six hours later.
The race owner/founder/director, Keira Henninger, is speaking slowly and emphatically into a bullhorn, giving final instructions to us runners. It’s the usual type of checklist we hear at every race. Look for the colored ribbons, don’t just rely on the person ahead of you, look for the ribbons marking the course. There are areas where it is single track, so yield to runners coming at you. Make sure you have enough hydration for at least six to nine miles since that is the distance between food and hydration stations. And so on, and so on, details we know in our bones as well as our memories.
But then Keira says something unexpected, something that causes the underlying buzz of nervous chatter to quiet.
A gentle, soft tone emphasizes the seriousness of her words. “When you’re out there today, make sure you stop, look around. Forget about your watch for a moment and really look around, look at the beauty around you and have a moment of gratitude for your health and the physical capability you still have to be able to run in this race today. Really appreciate the moment because someday you won’t be able to do this anymore.”
I take a deep breath and let her words sink in. The weight of her words need time to settle, to take hold of my unconscious fibers, to awaken that part of me that will safeguard these words deep in my implicit memory. Desert races are my favorite and that day as I negotiate the rolling terrain of Leona Divide, I do take in the scenery, the landscape of agave, buckwheat, sandstone and granite. But it will take more races, more years of running, more miles and miles of climbing and descending before I realize that day became a kairos moment for me.
Years after that race I found myself, along with every other human being, deep in the clutches of a pandemic. To prepare for that Leona Divide race, I had run an average of 50 miles per week which proved to be sufficient as I successfully survived the rigors of running a 32-mile desert trail race over rolling terrain.
But during the pandemic, there were no physical races. Race directors promoted virtual races where runners could run the required race distance while safely isolating. While I did participate in virtual events during the pandemic, there was something else compelling me to not just fulfill required distances, but to go beyond, to run upwards of 70 miles per week.
For years, the focus of running races was to perform to the best of my ability in order to preserve time. By running faster I could throttle the flow of time, slow the inevitable movement forward of chronos, to where distance measured in miles, yards, and feet could be accumulated in less and less time elapsed. Runners battle time, suspend the heavy handed reality of seconds ticking, ticking, ticking away incessantly by countering time with speed. Distance runners wield the concept of “negative splits” as if to shackle time by physical prowess.
It’s a heavy toll to pay when one is trying to achieve negative splits. Splits are defined as the time needed to run a mile measured in minutes and seconds. The desired strategy of running a race efficiently is to divide the distance in two, hoping that one can run the second half of the race faster than the first half. If one runs the second half faster, its total split times will be smaller than the first half splits, thereby achieving negative splits.
My running experience up until the pandemic had been all about achieving negative split consistency. But chronos is an undefeated opponent. Individual battles may be won when a particular race performance is highlighted by negative splits. But the overall reality of day-to-day living, years upon years, accumulating miles upon miles cannot stop the inevitable dominance of aging. Every year it becomes harder and harder to maintain speed, to achieve negative split consistency.
I am now 67 and I have accepted the reality of slower and slower overall race times. I still achieve negative splits, but the time differential is less and less between first half and second half of race results. As my body matures, my mindset has evolved as well. The older I become, the more miles per week I run and time is no longer an opponent but a friend I embrace and lean into as time on feet accumulates.
I appreciate that Leona Divide Race kairos moment. To look up, to appreciate the moment, to take in the surrounding world has become my goal. Keira’s words spur me on, “Someday you won’t be able to do this anymore.” So, even on mundane training runs, where I am just trying to log miles, I treat each session as a sacred event.
Someday it will be true, I won’t be able to run the miles I run now. So, I start each run with a moment of grounding, deeply breathing in, being aware of my breathing, being aware of what I’m feeling, what I’m hearing, just enjoying the moment. I feel the ground through my shoes, through the soles of my feet, imagining the feeling of the earth as it courses its way through my legs, through my core to my upper extremities, to my mind. And I look, and I survey the horizon taking in the scenic backdrop in the foreground.
Joy, true joy, fills my body, fills my mind as I take slow mincing steps at first, working my legs up to easy, effortless strides. Yes, I start my running watch as I record the ceaseless cadence of chronos movement for every run. But it's the kairos lesson of just being in the moment, appreciating every moment, having gratitude for every step, having awe for the total sensory experience I am still privileged to partake in, that is what keeps me running. And for 70 miles every week, I will climb mountain paths, ponder and meditate upon the oneness I feel with the wilderness around me, falling into the embrace of kairos as one who is not running to preserve time, but savoring time, savoring seconds, as one who knows that I must treat each moment as if I am running out of time.
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Thank you for the restack @Kara Westerman (she/her)!
Beautiful writing here! I'm so glad you are here.