On the Time Commitment of Marathon Training & How We Practice Patience with Gardening

Fear of losing or wasting time disallows us from finding joy in the process.

Weeds found their home in our soil, slugs clung to the bottom of our pots, and the back porch itself had a general feeling of disarray. We had left it like that for months. After vacation last summer, we let the plants die. Winter came and went. When spring breached the horizon, Kimberly and I told ourselves we would plant our herbs and tomatoes and squash and flowers, but we didn’t. One of our cats was sick and had to stay in the hospital (she’s fine), we both spent several weekends out of town, we got married, and had a honeymoon, and only in the past two weeks has it felt like we had a chance to breathe. 

So, I planted a garden last week. 

Had Memorial Day never happened, I’m not sure when we would have gotten around to planting things, but with the extra day, I went out in the wet hot South Carolina morning to pull weeds, repot flowers, and plant basil, thyme, and oregano. The work was difficult, sweaty, and I cursed myself for waiting so late in the year to do this, but it needed to be done, especially if we wanted to stop buying basil at the grocery store every week. 

Sansa loves being outside, though I wouldn’t say she really helps with the gardening.

After two hours of listening to The Strokes while covering myself in sweat, dirt, and collected rainwater, the garden had been planted. Pots of dirt looked up at me, their surfaces barren and ready. For a moment I thought if I stared at the soil long enough something would sprout right then and there. Of course, nothing happened. Satisfied with my work, I hauled my box of garden scraps to the underbrush of several pine trees in our backyard, turned off my speaker, and headed inside for a shower. 

I am hopeful that the upstart cost of the garden is worth it, because now I’ll have to wait, and I waited so long to plant I’m unsure if everything will make it through the blazing heat of June, July, August, and early September. My optimism remains. I really want that basil. 

The plants are on their own kind of marathon. They’ll spend the summer, like me, facing the elements, with strong thirst and ample fear of the sun’s brutal rays. Perhaps they’ll grow a lot one week, and have a more difficult one the next. Maybe the zucchini will battle through the thrashing winds of a summer storm. I don’t think the plants know what the next several months entail, but maybe they do, and maybe they’re preparing for summer’s onslaught so we can have an autumnal harvest. 

Some of the vegetables have already started growing. The radishes were the first to say hello with tiny sprouts peeking above the surface in a reminder I sowed too many seeds. I want to give the radishes their best chance of success — or rather, I want the best chance of success to eat one when they’ve finished growing. 

Sunflower sprout. Sunflowers are Kimberly’s favorite flower so we (try to) grow them every year.

I think, too, about the book manuscript I completed last week, and how all three of these things — the marathon, the garden, the book — are happening at the same time. One of my fears in starting to train for a marathon is the inexplicable loss of time I can anticipate as the days speed on toward the race. Training runs will increase in length, thus increase in time, and the frequency of those runs will likely increase as well. I always fear losing time and that I won’t have enough. How am I supposed to accomplish all I want to do while living in the constraints of a finite resource? 

My anxiety at losing time has led to two things: making difficult decisions and reading every productivity book and blog I can in an attempt to understand how I can add more time to my day. How can I get around working 8 hours everyday? Do I need to follow a strict schedule or routine? If the garden and the book are as important to me as the marathon, how will they fit into all of this? Is it just a matter of discipline and setting my mind to it and getting it done? 

A pot of flowers Kimberly got after completing the GOAT 5k. My flowers (planted in the Lady’s head) suddenly died, despite our best efforts.

Last week I wrote about coming to terms with not being my high school self and how good things take work. Good things also take time, which is an idea that is even harder for me to come to terms with. The beginnings of things are so exciting. Planting seeds and looking at the blank canvas of earth incites anticipation of new things to come, but soon the garden will become a chore. I’ll have to water and weed regularly. I’ll need to check the plants for bugs. Making time will be necessary. 

Making time will be necessary if I want to revise this manuscript, too. I wonder, as I continue to train, if time will be less of a concern. Perhaps having to schedule runs will make me more careful with how I spend the other minutes of my day. 

My marathon coach, Dana, often says training for a marathon will make you brave. Her athletes, because of marathon training, have made changes big and small to empower themselves and their lives. The marathon might be what I need to appreciate the slowness of growing things, the length of time it takes to cultivate something beautiful, whether that’s a zesty radish, typing the last word on a completed manuscript, or crossing the finish line.