The Loneliness of the Individual Lane

At some point in your event, it is just you.

Not you and a teammate who can pick up the slack. Not you and a game plan that adjusts based on what the other team does. Just you, the distance or the opponent or the clock, and what you’ve built. No one can reach into that space and help you. You are entirely alone with what you have.

That is a specific kind of human experience. It is worth talking about.

Read this passage slowly.

Let that sit for a second before you move.

With my God I can scale a wall. The psalmist is in a situation that requires individual capacity — scaling a wall is not a group activity in the same way that advancing against a troop might be. And the confidence is not in the individual’s native ability but in the presence that accompanies them into the solitary effort.

The loneliness of the individual lane is real. The distance runner at mile four of a six-mile race. The swimmer turning for the last length with everything burning. The wrestler in the third period when every movement costs more than it did in the first. At those moments, the team on the bench cannot reach you. What can reach you is what you’ve built in the quiet, and the presence of something larger than the effort.

Christian athletes in individual sports have access to something that is difficult to articulate to someone who hasn’t experienced it: the sense that the solitary effort is not actually solitary. That there is a presence that accompanies the work when the work is hardest. That the wall can be scaled not because of what you have alone but because of what accompanies you into the attempt.

Go into the hard part of the competition with that. Not as a magic performance enhancer. As the honest truth about who is in the lane with you.

Honest answers here are often surprising. This question reveals a lot about an athlete’s actual mental practice.