When the Run Is Fine, But I’m Not
11.15km, a paused watch, and a moment of grace on a bench
I ran 11.15km today.
To the beach.
Powerade in hand. Selfies were taken. It should’ve felt good.
But it didn’t.
The sun was brutal. The kind of heat that makes your brain feel like it’s melting before your legs even start to complain. I took a lot of breaks. I guess it wasn't so much laziness... I was just trying to survive. I could feel my energy drain like someone quietly pulled the plug.
Still, I made it to the halfway point, and decided to restart the tracking app for the return back home. Fresh run, fresh mindset, I thought. Except... I accidentally hit stop instead of resume.
Momentum: gone.
Mood: tanked.
Motivation: left the chat.
I restarted the run. Tried to keep going. But it felt like dragging myself through thick air. I was tired, annoyed, and hotter than I ever wanted to be. The second half of the run was physically hard + mentally painful. I couldn’t shake the frustration of the week, of Friday, of everything.
So I sat down on a bench.
An a minute later an older Korean woman who looked just as tired as I felt, sat down.
She looked over at me and said gently:
“땀도 흘리시네요.” (“You’re even sweating.”)
I smiled. “오늘 너무 더워요.” (“It’s too hot today.”)
It was such a simple exchange — two people, two sentences, a shared bench and some mutual exhaustion. As I got up to run again, she waved and added:
“진짜 덥다… 조심하세요.” (“It’s really hot… be careful.”)
Something about it felt so human. So kind. It broke the tension I had been carrying through the run and basically the whole damn week.
Sometimes it’s not the run that’s hard, but also it’s the stuff you bring into it. The mental clutter, the tech mishaps, the heat, the quiet disappointments. The run becomes the mirror, and all your bottled-up spiral gets poured out on the pavement.
This wasn’t my best run.
But I showed up.
I adapted.
I finished.
Even if it was awkward. Even if it was sweaty and slow and marked by a fumble of a watch button and a whole lot of stopping and sighing.
And somehow, in the middle of all that, I had a moment of connection with a stranger. In another language. On a shared bench, under the same sun.
We think spiraling is a breakdown but sometimes, it’s just the middle part.
The messy, unstructured, real part where things feel wobbly but you keep moving.
Reminder to self:
Not every run has to be glorious.
Not every spiral is a crisis.
Sometimes it’s just... being human, and finishing anyway.
🌀 This is part of the Sunday Spiral series. 29 weeks left this year. 29 spirals to go.
If you’ve ever had a run unravel or a stranger lift your spirits — you’re in good company.
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