Running Through Heartbreak

I’ve been told that runners look forward to rest days. They can prop themselves up on the couch and give their tired feet a break. And best of all, it’s guilt-free. A six-mile run burns about 600 calories, give or take, depending on the difficulty of the run.

Furthermore, rest days are vital to the beginning runner’s health. Your muscles need time to build their strength, and if the body hasn’t been conditioned to the constant impact of knees to feet to asphalt, it can literally fall apart.

When I first started running longer distances, about three years ago, I got so excited about what I thought my body could do that I upped my mileage from one to 6.5 in a matter of four weeks. I shouldn’t have been surprised when a visit to the doctor confirmed an injured Achilles tendon. I stopped running for almost half a year. It was, pun intended, completely lame. (groan)

Anyway, the Rest Day. The rejuvenation day. The healing day. The day when muscles, torn and beat up from a hard week’s pounding, knit themselves together slowly, invisibly. For people with broken hearts, they’re the torture day.

I’ve already begun to look toward running as a means of escape. It’s weird, considering where I came from. When I was in the fifth grade, my mom signed me up, without asking me, for cross country. I freakin’ hated it. Sports like softball or martial arts I could understand, but running? It accomplished nothing! You do some crummy loop around a field and you end up right back where you started, except you’re sweating, sunburnt, and you feel like you’re going to hack up a lung. And if you were me in fifth grade, you’d also be the last one to cross the finish line, every single time, and you’d have a killer side stitch.

Why is it so totally different now? Even before he left, I began to find joy in running, in watching my body accomplish something almost superhuman. I liked watching my calf muscles turn into hard, sculpted hills beneath my skin. I loved that I could go distances, using only my legs, that most people used cars to cover. I loved the thrilling post-run rush. I loved the days when the wall broke, and I felt, in the cool joy of evening, as if I were flying.

But running’s also really, really hard. Not gonna lie. And perhaps it’s for this reason that I find rest days so difficult to get through. On workout days, I can replace emotional pain with physical exertion. Instead of “Get through the day,” it’s “Get to the next street sign. Made it. Get to the next water stop. Made it.” There’s something tangible to accomplish when you run, whereas there’s nothing tangible about getting through emotional trauma. There are no mile posts. No street signs. No water stops. No assigned route. And worst of all, there are obstacles everywhere, and you step into them all the time, without any warning. Memories. Photos you forgot to throw away. Big pits full of anger, fear, and doubt.

When I first started posting on the Runners’ World Beginner’s Forum, a wonderful guy named Brad, who began running for the same reason I’m running now, gave me this advice: One foot in front of the other. It’s still the best advice I’ve heard yet. So. You and I. Let’s get through this rest day, and all its ups and downs and in betweens, until we can run again tomorrow. One foot in front of the other.