17 March 2016

The Joy (and Hallucination) of Running

February and March have been challenging for me as a beginning runner. Back in February, just as I was beginning to log uninterrupted mileage from the run/walk ramp-up program I'd been using, I managed to roll my heel. ...nope. Not a typo. I managed to roll not my ankle, but my heel.

I was turning onto a long hill, feeling strong for a Saturday long run of 3-4 miles (I hadn't really made up my mind 1/2 a mile in and was feeling strong and ambitious) and mentally playing out the curving 200-yard climb when I planted my foot unevenly in an ice rivet. I felt my heel dip down and start to roll over, and gave myself a mental high five for my cat-like reflexes, quickly shifting weight and pulling out of the roll.

"Whew! That could have been disastrous," I thought. I stopped. Stood. Hmmm. Bears my full weight. Hmmm. no pain when I move it around. Hmmm. Looks like I lucked out!

Smiling and feeling good, I took a few slow strides just to make sure. Still feeling good.

I was ecstatic. Years ago, I managed to pretty severely sprain BOTH ankles in short succession playing soccer. I remember how awful the pain was and worse, how frustrating it was to stay stationary, letting all those hard-won fitness gains slip away as I healed.

The idea of a sprain as I was leveling up after two and a half months of plodding along did not fill my soul with sunshine and ice cream.

Off I set to finish my run.

About a mile later was when it really started to act up and another couple hundred yards I knew my luck hadn't held. I had a long cold limp home.

As it turned out, I was much luckier than I realized. A few years ago, I probably would have just let it go, rested until there was manageable pain and tried agin, likely hurting myself again in the process. With this injury, calculating my weight, age, the potential lasting damage of a sprain and balancing against the benefits I was seeing in my health, endurance and mood, I opted for the doc. What I imagined was going to be catastrophic for my running, turned out to be a micro tear of the Achilles tendon in fibers attached to a heel-borne bone spur. Sounds awful, but it resulted in a week of walking rather than months.

I was happy to get back out on the road, making good progress until being laid up with cold/flu or whatever was going around. And then a lost week due to it being cold and my laziness/refusal to go back out in miserable cold when I'd already been running in shorts. Your choice on that one.

This week I renewed my milage goals as I finished Born to Run, the classic tale of prehistoric running super athletes. (And yes, I fully realize I'm likely the last runner on the planet to have read it.)

Tonight's run was three and a half miles. It was hellish and a struggle. My knees were tender and I was painfully aware of the ground I've lost in the past month.

It was, in a word, awesome.

I've come to realize in my running, both in the past few months and in spat we had a few years ago in pursuit of the Beach 2 Beacon, that the sport is at least as much a mental game as a physical one. I settled into as close to a tempo as I can manage and focused on form and pressure to let the knees take care of themselves. I pushed myself into a new neighborhood to pick up a few extra yards. I tackled a long hill (not the same one I rolled my heel on). And I forgot about time and distance and struggle.

Around about mile three, I realized I was smiling, standing up straight and literally high-fiving street signs along the route.

Because, shit, those street signs thinking I'm doing great!

Yeah, not kidding on that one. I honestly caught myself thinking that. Which probably should have embarrassed me. But nope. Just made me smile more.

As much as a struggle as tonight's run was, I feel at peace, the inner running monologue of my life is quiet, and, hey! I'm writing to boot!

The point being that while I am by no means a challenger to the Tarahumara, I am quickly becoming a believer in the idea that humans evolved to run, and there is a supreme joy in doing what, on a primal, primordial level, we were made to do.

There is joy. And, apparently, there is hallucination. Which isn't such a bad thing either.