I had planned to write a piece about how excited I was to get back to Peru. To meet the kids at the airport. I was going to write about meeting the kids at the airport and use it as a metaphor for my own journey from the sheltered world of my youth into the great, big world of adulthood. (For the record – I still like the idea of this piece, and it’ll probably follow in a couple of days). But I found myself struggling to write about this – what I think of as the “next stage” of my life – before I feel like I’ve really finished here.

On Sunday, I will graduate from college. This may be the most momentous upcoming event, but, for now, I can’t seem to get passed tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I will run what will possibly be my last college track race. What will probably be my last college track race. Honestly, it seems silly to write this down. It seems petty. It seems insignificant. What will I care about in a year, five years, fifty? Will I look back and think “Man, I’m glad I really cared. I’m glad I put so many hours and miles and calories into my sport.” Or, will I think, “I really wasted my time doing that. I sure was over-dramatic about something so insignificant.”

Looking back from where I sit now, I often waver back and forth between these two positions – decidedly convinced that my past self was undertaking some heroic and worthwhile pursuit of greatness or laughing at my own past ignorance and naivete at struggling to be an inarguably mediocre distance runner. Sometimes, it can be hard to look past this. I see myself in the future looking back at my current self saying, “Stop wasting your time! Who really cares if you run 31 minutes or 29 minutes for 10k? You’re not going to win any Olympic medals with either, so is it worth all the miles run and nights stayed in to run two minutes faster for 25 laps around a big oval?”

At this point, I’ve run 19,461 miles since I started running seriously and keeping a log of my training at the end of my senior year of high school, just over 5 years ago. So, I guess – to address the cynical future-me – there’s not much to lose in caring about what I’m doing for another 24 hours. The hay is in the barn, as they say.

And so, yes, I do care. I care today and I’ll care tomorrow. I’ll act like it’s a big deal because it is a big deal to me right now. And it’s been a big deal to me for five years, for better or for worse. This race, this season, represents the culmination of the journey of time and energy spent chasing the simple idea of self-improvement. To be better tomorrow than I am today. To cover ground.

But this culmination – is it the end? Is this the end of my running career or is it, like my college graduation (and here we go with the symbolism again), simply the end of a particular paradigm? The cadence to end a movement.

No. My education did not end as I handed in my chemistry final and my running career will not end when I cross the finish line tomorrow night, in victory or defeat. Take a deep breath. It’s okay to care. But life goes on – even running goes on –  one way or another. Asi es la vida.