When I was 18 years old my good friend Mark and I decided that we would like to run a 26 mile marathon. We signed up for the San Francisco Mayor’s Cup Marathon. It was the summer of 1979 and we had run cross country one year, our senior year in high school.
I read a book by Jim Fixx called the Joy of Running. In one of the chapters he talked about running a marathon. That interested me. He wrote about something called “hitting the wall.” Apparently lots of people, somewhere between miles 18 and 22 , get a feeling that they just can’t go on. He counseled that if you could just find the strength to get through those miles, that many people later on would feel a second wind which gives them the energy to finish the race.
That Sunday September morning at about mile 20 Mark told me that he just couldn’t go on. I told him that I felt the same way. I also shared with him what Jim Fixx had mentioned in his book. We decided to just continue on to see if we might get that second wind a couple of miles later. We did and ended up finishing the marathon strong! We were glad to have known that other runners felt the same way, and that they were able to get through it.
Having an awareness of future challenges in her life and how others have gotten through them can be very helpful.
For example, knowing in advance that many adolescents pull away from parents a little bit during middle and early high school years can help a parent be prepared and not feel so rejected and unappreciated. Knowing that lots of people go through adolescence finding their parents to be a nuisance, yet later on in adulthood, appreciate their parents efforts and even come to admire them, can help a parent get through their children adolescent years without losing hope.