Tuesday’s Thoughts on Running

There’s something extremely humbling, about laying in the middle of the sidewalk on a dark Thursday evening. After all these months of running, it was the first time I’d fallen. I must’ve tripped over something on the sidewalk. Kind of weird after my boss had just berated me earlier in the day about running in the dark by myself. I asked what else I was supposed to do? It’s dark in the morning, it’s dark at night. He suggested I take a lunch and run then. But who’s lunch is two and a half hours? I don’t even take “lunch” because they need someone in the front office. So, there I was thinking to myself “I can’t be twenty-four with a broken hip right?” I’m just telling myself that the crunching noise I heard while I stumbled was the crushing of acorns beneath my sneakers. Somehow my headphones remained intact during the tumble. I’m not quite sure how that happened. Anyway, I rolled over because I wasn’t sure how else I was going to get up off the ground. I was fighting the urge to cry. I looked around, and there weren’t any other people out. There were only like three cars on the street and they’d already flown by. The street lamps weren’t bright enough for me to access my injuries. I found my phone, and looked at the screen and it had basically shattered, shards of glass poking out on the bottom half around the home button, tiny pieces crunching into my left palm. Luckily I’d over estimated how cold it was outside, and double layered. While it ended up holding in too much body heat for my comfort, it worked out because it was extra cushioning on the fall. I briefly considered calling someone, maybe walking home…but I was only four miles in on a twelve mile run. It was supposed to be my last big training run before the race. SO after I realized that my pride hurt more than my body, and it was just some scrapes and bruises, I decided to forge on. I was listening to Jack’s Mannequin Pandora at the time, (what’s new?) and a lot of the lyrics are inspiring anyways. Mixed with the flashes of my old standby encouragement and motivation (Olympic athletes of course! From Michael Phelps, to the USA women gymnasts, to the track stars I watched carry on through obvious intense injury) I wasn’t even that hurt, just frustrated with myself. I was still reading Dominque Moceanu’s memoir, Off Balance at the time, and I kept thinking to myself about all of the people who are a lot stronger than me, face a challenge, and achieve like crazy goals. I wish I could tell you I had some really sophisticated mantra I repeated to myself, but it was a lot more simple than that. I just reminded myself “I’m not a baby.” Sounds cheesy? Maybe, but it worked. I finished that run, but something felt different. I felt determined but also frustrated and kind of angry, which sounds bad but hear me out…it seems dramatic, and now a few days out I’ve simmered down over the whole thing but I was just pretty mad at myself, and kind of bitter towards running. I felt like I failed. It felt like my body betrayed me, and there was such caution in each step, that I couldn’t trust the ground beneath my feet. In turn it felt like the escape had been ripped away. The fun got zapped. Running ten miles, now that was awesome. It was this exhilarating feeling, my friend described it perfectly saying it felt like you could conquer the world. But twelve…twelve I started to get bored, and I was getting restless and wanting it to be over. Now with a shorter run, and some rest days mixed in, I’m back in my routine. I’ve got the rest of this week, and a serious taper next week, and then it’s race day. Right now, I’m just anxious for it to be over. This training period has been a while. I feel like it’s taught me a lot about when to give my body a rest, showing me goals I can achieve I might not have thought possible before, and learning the slow and steady way to increase mileage. While I’m pretty sure I should continue to sign up for races to keep myself conditioned, and so I’m not tempted to slack off as the colder weather sets in, it will still be nice to have my own schedule going…less dictation in my runs throughout the week. Now that the routine is back in swing, I feel a lot better about things. So, really I’m just hoping that the only similarities between race day and last Thursday are – that I don’t cry, and I don’t give up.

Escapism at it’s finest…

This was one of those mornings where the alarm went off and I lay in bed thinking to myself, do I really need to run? Do I want to go pound the pavement and get sweaty and tired right now? I rolled over to the cooler side of my pillow hitting the snooze button and just thinking. Can’t I just go back to sleep and do it this afternoon? But do I ever end up going in the afternoon…no. (Well, honestly it happens occasionally, but not often enough if I’ve skipped the morning alarm.) I debated trading in my health for an extra half hour of laying motionless with my eyes closed, beyond that opportunity to surrender myself to sleep, before it was really time to get up. Then I decided to check my Facebook. It’s just a restless habit I guess. I always feel foolish when I do it in the morning, like what could have really happened in the last seven hours, that’s that important I need to check? I had a text from a friend with such a fun memory, and though she’d sent it when I’d fallen asleep – it was one of those things where I’m thankful I’m not the only memory keeper. That sometimes our friends store the good ones in a sweet spot and take them out to savor in recollection every once in a while, too. But then I looked at Facebook, and there was a message from the past just looming there. It doesn’t matter what it was about, but more importantly that it was all I needed to hop up and get dressed, throw on my shoes, brush my teeth, and get out the door. I knew I was dangling close to the edge of the safe amount of emotional turmoil to take on and I knew that reading that and still ignoring the urge to get out there and run, would be a mistake. Where ever my mind decided to take me today, I was going to need that little bit of sanity that’s gained through those early morning runs, the tiny amount of space on the shelf in my brain that gets cleared off when I just breathe and push myself. I had no patience for the warmup, I just took off. Running hard, feeling myself pick up speed in the dark, around illegally parked cars in the street, too early to have any dog walkers to dodge. But the thing is, there wasn’t any anger, no real frustration, just that act of cleansing. The release that makes my insides feel a little less cluttered, instead of like a jammed garbage disposal. I found myself thinking “there’s not enough space for the both of us in my thoughts, so get out.” Maybe it’s harsh, but it’s true. I conjure up enough scenarios to mull over that I don’t need ghosts delivering new ideas. But as my thoughts drifted away from that, I thought about my hometown and my parents moving away from it. I’m almost halfway through my twenties, but most of the time I still feel like a teenager. There are certain people in that town who always sparked a school girl crush, and I imagine not running into them anymore. I mean, it’s a normal progression of life, and it’s not unexpected it’s just an odd thought. It started to sink in a little more because most days I try to get those thoughts to rush past, and not stick. I get too hung up on  nostalgia and it’s not worth the depletion of energy. But people grow up, we change, we move away, we settle down, we disappear, and everything is in some sort of constant motion. I think of the houses and the hang outs. It doesn’t matter that a building is in the same place (of if it gets turned into a cell-phone store) because time charges on and just because an establishment is there – it doesn’t mean the same stories will continue to be written in those places. I guess I’m saying that I think I’m finally learning to accept the past for what it is, and not try to cram the future in there too.The only thing is, I have to hold on to that thought long enough to believe it. Because then I’m driving to work and this wave of something washes over me. What? I’m not sure. It’s not exactly nostalgia, it’s not regret, it’s not longing either. It’s an emotion I can’t quite pin down. I was just thinking of the way I leave that town behind, but yet the pieces always have their ways of following me here. Anyway, another story for another day…

The trend of the week seems to be surprises. Yesterday there was an opossum in the trash can at work, (which is disgusting and I’m walking out if someone gets rabies.) Today my lovely little message. We’ll see what the rest of the week brings, if the surprises keep rolling in hopefully they’re of the good variety.