Endurance.  Persistence.  To see the wall in front of you and push it, punch at it, tear it down.  Runners frequently are faced with barriers, and we are all equipped with varying methods and degrees of dealing with these barriers.  But sometimes it is the desire to keep pushing that is the hardest thing of all.

This year has not been a good year for me for running for a whole number of reasons.  Between schedule conflicts, responsibilities, and injuries, I suspect that the amount of running miles I tallied in 2011 was dwarfed by the miles run in the first four months of 2010.  But I love running, and I especially love some fresh powder to plow through in the morning.  It’s incredibly peaceful and certainly less nerve-wracking than driving through it to get to work.

Again, I have not been hitting the pavement as often as I should be, and I knew that I needed to take it easy running the 10K from my workplace to the bus stop if I was to come right back out the next morning and do it again.  On the other hand, I knew that I was running 5 minutes late (as usual), so I didn’t want to go too slowly.  So out into the Michigan winter wonderland I went, gazing around at the treelimbs covered in white with a big smile on face.

This smile did not last long.  Apparently I had forgotten that running though snow is not the best thing for speed, and certainly not good for one’s pacing.  Normally I wouldn’t mind, but I had a schedule to keep and a bus to catch.  On top of that, as soon as I hit the hills on my route I knew something was wrong.  My legs felt fine; my knees were doing all right… but my energy level just was not there.  I had to concentrate on my breathing and felt light-headed coming out of an incline… certainly not an indicator for an enjoyable run.  The last thing I needed was to poop out after four miles, so I forced myself into what I thought was a respectable yet leisurely pace.

I found out just how leisurely as I made the turn into my final stretch, about .7 miles away from my bus stop.  According to my cell phone, it had taken me one hour to run five and a half miles!  That’s close to an 11-minute pace, and I was almost completely drained of energy.  But most disheartening of all:  I had something between 5 to 6 minutes to make the bus on time.

That painful realization forced me into a dead run.  As I kicked up the snow I knew that there was no way I’d make it on the sidewalk, so I popped down onto the (blessedly wide) bicycle path on the side of the road.  As I approached the curve that led to the intersection where my bus turned, I was somewhat relieved to see a person standing there waiting.  But I wasn’t out of the woods yet:  at any time, the bus could appear and turn, and there was still an eighth of a mile to go.

At this point, my legs were numb and my mind a haze.  I involuntarily began doing something I had never done before:  making grunting noises with each exhalation.  Still I charged up the final incline to the intersection, watching as the light for the cross-traffic turned green.  And there was the bus, making a left.  Without pause, I glanced briefly for cars that might make a left-hand turn on my side of the road and, not seeing any, I sprinted across the intersection to the bus stop, waving my arms like a maniac.  For a moment I thought the driver didn’t see me, but the bus stayed at the curb just long enough for me to leap up the steps and jump in.  I had made it.

I managed to gasp to the driver that I needed a second before I could grab my bus pass out of my running backpack.  He nodded and continued down the street.  Two young ladies watched me with amused looks as I stood there at the front of the bus, heaving.  The last thing I needed now was to pass out or vomit on the bus – both situations struck me as being messy at best, not to mention embarrassing.

At the next stop, the driver looked at me expectantly and I was able to hand over my fare.  Although extremely light-headed, I held it together until I reached my destination and clambered out, barely able to walk.  I regained some strength as I approached my daughter’s school to pick her up, but needless to say I was far less cheery than normal.  Without question, my evening commute had turned into one of the top three most difficult runs I had ever experienced.

Every day, those afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis are faced with a similar daunting challenge.  They deal with chronic fatigue, discomfort, bizarre and random physical issues, and even paralysis.  There are two ways to deal with this:  succumb, or forge forward.  Like running, some days are better than others.  But giving up is not an option.  This is why we run, why we walk, and why we bike; why we keep our destination firmly embedded in our mind’s eye.  It is that day when we at last awake to a world free of Multiple Sclerosis.