“You runners, always double-knotting your shoes,” a spectator laughed at me and a friend as we performed the double-knot ritual before the start of a marathon a few years ago. We don’t even like leaving to chance the possibility of having to stop mid-race for an untied shoe, spend weeks and months honing the perfect marathon pace down to the second, and carefully monitor what we eat and drink daily. And yet, on race day, it’s always the same story: whatever is about to unfold is out of our ability to control. I’m certainly not saying people shouldn’t train to run races; that would not be helpful. But a healthy acceptance that events are ultimately beyond whatever we might do to prepare for them might make us better runners and racers. And by simply accepting we really can’t manage our lives in general, we might even paradoxically make them a little more manageable.
