Testing Your Limits - A Tale Of Two Bumper Stickers

(originally published October 26, 2015. My original blog, on Wordpress, was hacked in early 2016. All of the original posts, through January 2016, have been re-posted here on Blogger.)

I may have come across someone with more miles on her feet than her car. While stopped at a light in Jerusalem recently, the fender of the car in front of me boasted about a dozen bumper stickers. Not the usual bumper stickers with a political agenda or a catchy saying. Rather, bumper stickers that bore testament to the driver’s devotion to running.

At many a marathon, the runners receive oval stickers with “42.2” printed on them - 42.2 is the total number of kilometers in a marathon. These stickers then find their way onto the marathoner’s rear bumper.

The car in front of me had one of those 42.2 bumper stickers - but not just one - multiple stickers blanketed the back fender. And not just “42.2” stickers. There was a 50K sticker and a 100K sticker, among several others. The owner of that car doesn’t merely run multiple marathons. She also runs “ultras” - those races that range from slightly longer than a marathon to ridiculously longer than a marathon.

A few days later, I was again stopped at a light in Jerusalem behind a car with one of those oval bumper stickers. This time, however, the bumper contained only one sticker. And the text deviated from the norm - “0.0” the sticker proclaimed in large print, while the smaller print underneath said, “I don’t run.”

While slightly amusing, I pondered what would cause a person with no skin in the running game to go to the trouble of affixing a “0.0” sticker for all the world to see. I presume this person is either a couch potato curmudgeon who has grown weary of all the active people around him, or else the spouse of a devout runner who pointedly does not share their partner’s enthusiasm.

How does one person run multiple marathons, and distances well beyond, while another won’t run around the block? It all comes down to limits - or rather, what we perceive our limits to be. The “0.0” person may well have big goals in other realms. But I suspect not.

Haruki Murakami, a best-selling author who also happens to be a marathoner, wrote a wonderful book about his running life, entitled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. While the book does discuss the physical side of running, it mostly delves into the mental side.

Murakami tells of his sojourn into the ultramarathon world - completing a 62-mile race at Lake Saroma in northern Japan. At the 26.2 mile mark, Murakami passes a sign that says, “This is the distance of a marathon,” a distance beyond which he had never ventured. He is now in new territory, or as Murakami puts it, “a Strait of Gibraltar, beyond which lay an unknown sea.” As he racks up the miles, various parts of his body begin to hurt more intensely. He starts to feel more machine than human. By the 47^th mile, he feels as if he has “passed through” some barrier and is on the other side of his previous reality. From there to the finish line, he runs more or less on autopilot, without thinking, without his muscles complaining.

Murakati then goes on to wax eloquent about how in the weeks and months following the race, he “felt covered by a thick film, something I’ve since dubbed runner’s blues . . . After this ultramarathon, I’d lost the enthusiasm I’d always had for the act of running itself. . . I don’t know why, but it was undeniable: something had happened to me.”

I think I know what that something was. It wasn’t a “thick film.” Quite simply, Murakati had run a ridiculously long distance, and he had had enough. He had reached his limit. He didn’t want to go any farther.

But hey, if you don’t hit your limit until 62 miles, that’s a pretty impressive limit. For me, I feel like my limit is a marathon. I cannot imagine running an ultra. I don’t see myself running one step beyond a marathon.

Yet, I know that the marathon isn’t really my limit. Once upon a time, when I first ran a 5K, completing a 10K seemed impossibly out of reach. Then, I ran a 10K, and it was the 1/2 marathon that was beyond my limit. Then, the marathon. Then, multiple marathons within a short time frame.

Now, none of those are beyond my limit. So I know that if I really wanted to run an ultra, I’d find a way to run it. At this point, the only thing stopping me from running an ultra is the mental limit I have put up - I don’t have a desire to run that far, and I don’t really want to put in the kind of training it would take.

And that’s ok - as long as I acknowledge that an ultra isn’t impossible for me. I’m simply choosing not to do it. When I’m done with my five marathons, I’ll have to pick some other goal (perhaps something more sedentary this time).

Too often, though, we put limits on ourselves without realizing that we are the ones creating the limits. Truthfully, we can do much more than whatever limits we place on ourselves. That is true of physical activity, career, family, or anything else. If we think we’ve done everything we can do professionally, there is probably much more we could accomplish if we mentally set our limit at a higher level. If we think our relationship with our family is great, it could probably be exponentially better if we started to imagine the possibilities.

In the end, it’s really up to us. Sometimes, genuine barriers do block our path. But more often than not, it is we who get in our own way.

It’s worth testing our real limits. That’s the only way we can know how far we can go. Would you rather have a car bumper that says 42.2, or 13.1, or even 10K or 5K (or whatever life goal you’ve set for yourself)? Or would you rather it say 0.0 and announce to the world that you didn’t try?

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I am running these five marathons for the amazing children and adults at the Israel Sport Center for the Disabled. We have set a goal of $5,000. Every donation of any amount makes a difference. Click here if you want to help us get to the finish line!