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 | Tags: fight, healing, long run, running, sadness, struggle
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I found these tonight. Search terms that led people to my blog, either accidentally or purposefully.
We can do this.
9 miles tomorrow.
Run with me.
Filed under: Dealing, Inspiration, Training Runs | Tags: fight, healing, Inspiration, running, sadness, sick, struggle
I don’t know why I haven’t written this down until now. I was thinking about it yesterday, around mile six on the treadmill, while I was trying to find anything to distract me from the tedium and the slowly ticking seconds on the machine’s display.
A couple of weeks ago, I was running in my hometown in New Jersey, a mile or two away from my parents’ house. It’s not a great place to run; November is bad month in the Pine Barrens. Everything is gray and brown and flat, and the wildness of the place, the sandy soil and the thick forests of spiky trees, makes the small neighborhoods look strange, as if the houses, yards, and cars were all dropped there, and then forgotten, by some distracted child.
It was my first run after a week of being sick, and I was feeling it. It wasn’t only physical fatigue; my heart was tired, my will to fight weak. There wasn’t a person to be seen, and I found myself resenting these quiet houses, decorated for the holidays, nestled among the trees. I resented the families who lived there, their children’s toys in the yards, the holiday decorations on the trees, everything that spoke to me of others’ happiness and contentment. Every step began to feel futile. I hadn’t run in a week, and I was weary. The marathon – twenty-six miles! – suddenly loomed in the future as a completely insurmountable goal. I was gasping at five miles, and I expected to run over five times this distance! It was insane! Everything inside me limped. Sadness and defeat rose before me, a cloud of gray before my eyes.
And then I saw something so strange, so utterly fantastical, that I thought I had stepped into the boundless realm of a dream.
To my right, in the silent yard of some unnamed family, surrounded by fallen leaves, bare trees, and holiday decorations, was a flying pig.
I rubbed my eyes. I slapped myself. But there it was. It was one of those blow-up decorations, the ones that cost exorbitant sums of money. It was bright pink, about the size of a golden retriever, and on its back was a pair of white angel’s wings. I jogged past it slowly, wondering inanely why anyone would choose a pig with wings for a holiday decoration. It didn’t disappear, though. I watched it as I ran by, standing silently and peacefully in that yard, growing larger and then smaller as I finally passed it by.
So much of running is about fighting. Fighting slowness, fighting pain, fighting for air, fighting to finish, fighting your own heart and mind. These past five months, I have been running to fight. Running to survive. Running to heal. Perhaps, though, there is something else. Perhaps it’s not all about running to fight.
Maybe it’s about fighting to run.
I’m still going. One foot in front of the other.
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.
