Tuesday, July 15, 2014

What I've Learned by Running Less

I’m getting married in 11 days!  That really is the biggest news I have to write about.  Metaphorically and practically,  I always feel it’s better to be running toward something rather than running away from something.  And, so it goes that the beautiful girl that is always waiting just up the trail or road is going to say “I do” back to me.

The Backyard Project Completed
I haven’t posted anything here since March 10th but I have started several posts.  They have titles like “Vernonia”, “A DNF Autopsy”, “Short Cuts” and “What’s Wrong With Me”.  Several of them start the same way:
I told you, from the start, just how this would end.
When they get what they want, they never want it again.
Hole - Violet

I thought those lyrics would be a clever way to announce running a goal time at Vernonia, even though it wasn’t a PR.  It didn’t work out that way.  An ankle problem brought about by an ongoing hip problem ended my Vernonia Marathon at 19 miles.  

I was in the process of writing about everything that went wrong at Vernonia when some initial medical evaluations, looked really bad, so I stopped writing that one.  

When I got better news about my ankle, and a very real wake up call about taking care of my hip, I was either going to write about the many shortcuts that I realize I take in training or some sort of grand synopsis of everything wrong with me.

I’ve had several months at very low mileage. I spent a very fun Saturday participating in the Elijah Bristow 24 hour race, even if I stopped at 32 miles.  Regardless of any of these circumstances, I have always planned on an easy running July, focusing most of my time and energy on the wedding and getting the house ready for a reception.  But a funny thing happened on the short road to the forum.  I learned something about running.  I’m old!

I really expected that dropping my miles down a bunch would, at least, give my body a break.  I thought all of the aches and pains that I usually attribute to running would fade and I would have a few glorious, spry, nimble months before I got serious about training again.  To quote my grandson Elliott “...as it turns out….” those aches and pains are all still with me, and are obviously more the result of aging than of running.

If that is true…...then the honeymoon, both literally and figuratively, continues.