Filed under: Dealing | Tags: memories, recovery runs, sadness, short run, struggle
I’ve only recently started doing recovery runs. I went on one tonight. Just a mile or two, at an easy pace, to be done the day after a long run. It’s supposed to help the muscles heal faster by increasing blood flow to the affected areas. So far, it really has been helping. I’ve felt less stiff, less sore, less tired.
Tonight was the first warm night in many months. I put on a pair of capris and a long-sleeve shirt, covered my ears with a hat. The breeze was cool against my face. I sailed, gently. Feet like rudders on the ground. Breath like the slow swish of waves.
It was warm when he left me. Now it’s warm again.
Filed under: Dealing | Tags: cross-training, fight, healing, marathon, memories, races, running, sadness, struggle
My knees don’t hurt. My heel doesn’t hurt. I’m not tired. I wasn’t even tired yesterday, though I took a rest day from exercising. It appears that I recovered from the 15-miler quite quickly, to my utmost relief and surprise! Week 13 in the countdown starts today. I went to the Y and did my normal cross-training routine: 45 minutes on the stationary bike, making sure to keep myself between 80 and 100 RPM; twenty minutes of core exercises (crunches, leg lifts, push-ups, planks, etcetera); and lots of stretching.
I thought I would hate cross-training, but it’s becoming quite enjoyable. Now that I’m not running with the Team, there are few people who I can train with who match my mileage and pace (I go too slow and/or too long, it seems, for most of my friends). Training has been a solitary venture. I like going to the gym simply because there are other people around. It’s a break from the same scenery which, I have to admit, is getting a bit drab. I’m a social person, and since the break-up, I’ve found myself wanting to be around people more often.
Once in a while, I’ve found myself wondering what I will do after the marathon is over. It’s less than four months away. It’s been nearly half a year since my life was turned inside-out. I wonder if I will truly be healed when I cross that finish line. That was always the plan, wasn’t it? I wasn’t just running to run – this was a timeline, a path that I could follow through the darkness and into the sun.
But sometimes the darkness is still dark, as if I run through a deep canyon, the sky only a crack of light far above my pumping legs.
Filed under: Dealing, Training Runs | Tags: fight, healing, memories, running, running routes, sadness, struggle, winter
I don’t know what my problem is. It’s as if I have taken some gigantic steps backward. I’m in DC for a gig, and I’m a mess. It seems the winter holiday season has blindsided me. It shouldn’t have; I knew it was coming. I guess I just didn’t anticipate the incredible flood of memories that would come with it. Even worse than the memories, though, are the might-have-beens: the images of endless futures, glowing with joy and lights, that will never be. The family I’ll never —
Stop. That’s too hard to write about. Let’s talk about something better, something easier. Let’s talk about those DC hills.
This morning, I ran five of the hardest miles of my life. Gmap Pedometer doesn’t calculate elevation, so I had no idea what I was getting into when I went out the door, my route scribbled in black pen on the back of my hand. Let’s just say that the hills didn’t end. They came in all varieties: short and steep, long and sloping, one after another after another. Every time I thought I had scaled the final hill, I came upon two more. By the end of the last mile, I was literally narrating my run to myself, out loud, my breath rasping in my throat: “This is for the Pig! Push! Push! One foot in front of the other! You can do it! Up! Up! Go!” I’m sure I looked like a nutter.
In a way, it was a good thing. The Pig is not a flat race, and I knew that eventually I would have to start tackling harder terrain. It also reminded me of the reason I started this in the first place: when you’re straining to go on, when there is nothing left in you but that final push, when you think you can’t go any further but you do anyway, and all there is is the breathing, the tightness in your calves, the pounding of your feet — that’s when you can pull on your inner strength, that’s when you know that even though you’ve passed through fire, and are still passing through it, you’re alive, and you’re still breathing, and you’re still running.
These days, it’s been harder than usual to believe that I’ll be completely healed when I cross that finish line in May. But I finished five miles of the hardest running I’ve ever done. Twenty-one more to go, but I’ll do it. I’ll do it.
Filed under: Dealing | Tags: healing, memories, races, running, sadness, struggle
I’ve been mostly writing about running, lately. It’s generally going well; I finished a five-miler tonight, and did a 5K (not a race, just me) at a hard pace on Sunday night. I’m signed up for a February half marathon.
Boston has been kind to me; at least, the people in Boston have been kind. The new job is refreshing and fun, and there are always friends to go out with, new things to discover, new sights to be seen. The other night, a friend took me to Arlington, and from the top of the highest hill, in the quiet dark, we looked over the vast expanse of Boston, its lights sparking into the distance like a rippling sea under the stars.
I’m not alone, and I’m usually not lonely. There are three cats in the house, and at least one of the four girls I live with is usually around. The presence of other people in my life is comforting.
It’s been – what? Four months. Sometimes it feels like a year since my life turned upside down, since my plans went the way of Robert Burns’ poem, since he left. Time has not been fluid. In the beginning, it was almost as if each minute took a year to pass. Now: Thanksgiving. In a couple of weeks: The winter holidays. Christmas. Chanukah. My roommate is talking about putting a tree in the dining room. New Year’s Eve plans are being discussed.
But then, four months isn’t a long time. Not compared to a year. Not compared to five years. And sometimes the pain, like a hidden wave, roils to the surface. A memory, a familiar scent, a feeling, a longing, a joke.
It takes a while, they say. It takes longer than you think, they say.
I have time, though. Time to pray, to search, to let things dissipate. I have time to run. I have time to run.
Filed under: Dealing | Tags: Eating, half marathon, healing, injuries, memories, running, sadness, struggle
The Half is off. I’m just not prepared.
It really stinks. But there’s tons of time until the Pig, and I’m thinking about another half in a month or two, this time with better training. That whole eating well, stretching, and strength-training thing is NOT a joke, people. Your ankles won’t like it if you don’t, you know, do it.
I’m having a little bit of difficulty – ok, a lot – balancing my life. It’s become surprisingly busy. Work, practice, gigs, running, and socializing all compete with each other for top spots, and I barely even have time for anything else, like a quiet breakfast, an hour of contemplation, a little bit of reading.
At least I don’t have a huge amount of time to be sad, though it still happens pretty often, in moments of stillness, or when I see couples together, or when it just hits me that I’m HERE, surprise-surprise, and that if things had gone my way, I would still be with…
But so it goes.
