The Baltimore Marathon

Saturday, I ran in the Baltimore Half Marathon, and ran a personal best time.  It was a great day for a race, clear skies, and a light breeze gale force bunch of wind gusts.  I made a friend at the starting line, so I had someone to run with.  In short, it was perfect - except for my knee.  It gave a twinge or two as we started, but I wasn't worried; it had given twinges before and the pain had gone away.  That happened Saturday too - until mile 11.  At mile 11, my knee decided bending was fairly optional, and when it did bend, it hurt like the dickens.  Maybe the pain would go away, I thought, and so it did, for about 100 yards, and then it came back.  I had two choices:  I could stop running and walk to the finish line, or  I could push through and run across the line.  Neither choice was great.  If I stopped running 2.1 miles before the finish, chances were better than even that before I got to my car and returned home, my knee would cool down and seize up.  As it was my driving leg, that would present a problem.  On the other hand, if I ran through the finish, I would have a personal best time (who says I'm not competitive?), and I would probably make it home before agony set in (which it did).  Of course, who knows how much additional damage I would do to my knee by continuing.  Because you read the first sentence of this blog post, you know which choice I made. 
The first thing I did when I returned home (after popping multiple Ibuprohin and strapping on the ice packs), was research my injury.  I learned that I made a mistake, and that one mistake caused my big problem.  You see, what I found is that running was not the only leg exercise I should have been doing.  By using running as my only leg exercise, I was causing my calves and my hamstrings, and some of my glutes to become very developed, but I was exercising my quadriceps not at all.  For those of you who have no knowledge of anatomy, what that means is that I was exercising my lower leg and the back of my thighs an awful lot, and the front of my thighs not at all.  It takes the muscles of both the back and the front, the top and the bottom of the leg to hold the knee in the right position for running.  My training guaranteed that at some point, my knee was going to give out and I would be faced with the choice I had yesterday.  As I sit here, immobile on the couch, I started thinking, as I usually do, about how my marathon was like the Trenches.  Believe it or not, it is.
Before our clients even get into the Trenches, they (and probably their spouse) have ignored at least one, and probably more, things that were important to the health of their marriage.  In the back of their minds, they suspected it, but things seemed to be relatively OK, so they ignored the occasional twinge - until mile 11.  At their mile 11, the problems became impossible to ignore, and so they had a choice.  They could stop what they were doing and try to fix the problem, or they could power through.  Sometimes the first choice lands them in the Trenches; the second choice always does.  The sad part is that the demise of their marriage, like my knee, could have been prevented if they had recognized the warning signs, interpreted them and acted accordingly.
Once our clients end up in the Trenches, the divorce process itself is like my Baltimore Half Marathon.  No matter the process, a divorce is an endurance test, not a sprint.  The choice of process the client makes determines the kind of race they have and the result with which they are left.  Do they litigate as opposed to mediate or collaborate?  Do they take no prisoners or try to be conciliatory?  Do they focus on custody and forget the finances (or vice versa)?  All of those choices determine the kind of race they will have.  A Half Marathon is grueling, no matter how you run it.  Whether you run it wisely and thoughtfully determines whether you live to run again tomorrow, or not until next week, next month or never.  How a client handles their divorce determines whether the result will be acceptable to them and whether the process will leave them able to move forward or remain stuck in the anger and disappointments of the past.