The Running Village

There are days during marathon training when despite all the motivational posters, mantras and self talk, you simply balk.  By week 14 everything rebels. Your sore, your tired, your body is full of aches, pains and microtears to muscles, and you can't believe you are really doing it again - a relentless groundhog day mentality sets in.  Even seeing Q-Less picking me up for a speed work out, which would normally brighten my day made me think ' huh - we doing this again?'

Twice a week I take 'recovery' runs around the High School.  Recovery is really a misleading term as mostly I feel like a train wreck for the first few miles, but eventually they start to feel OK.  Recovery runs also coincide with dropping the kids off at school which allows me just enough time to get a 7 mile loop in before getting ready for work at the running store.  So there is none of my habitual slouching in pajamas on recovery days. I have to be dressed, ready for combat and oatmeal eaten by 7 am.  That in itself wouldn't be too hard, but throw in waking up kids, getting lunches packed, breakfast inhaled and swim/track bags remembered makes it a tad more challenging.  Since her 16th birthday the newly self styled 'preppy betch' now has to drive her little brother and myself to school in her shiny black bug.  My mellow relaxed start to the day has been replaced by the snarling arrogance of preppy betch behind the wheel. Like the road hog Toad in Wind in the Willows she takes us on a white knuckle ride most mornings; every advice or direction I give, is rebuffed  by sassy 16 year old responses, that result me in either telling her to pull over and relinquish the wheel or her beligerent silence.

Just arriving in the high school parking lot alive now feels like an achievement.  Dredging up the energy to get the run in has been getting progressively harder to closer I come to taper, as I am getting worn down by the hard runs and weeks of training.  On Monday I managed to negotiate a few cell phone wielding Mom's in their SUV's, probably equally stressed, who nearly wiped me out running on the road parallel to the schools.  Then relaxing into my recovery pace I really started to drag.  After two miles of plodding along, in the distance I saw a vision in blue approaching and was delighted to notice it was the lovely local eye doctor on her Broad Street training loop around the park.  I quickly ditched my normal route and shamelessly attached myself to her, almost throwing myself at her as if she were a celebrity.  Kind soul that she is, she ditched the i-pod and instead listened to my breathless babbling about how happy I was to see her as "I really needed company"to keep myself from heading straight home to the parking lot.

Probably startled by my advances, she kindly let me join her and the miles passed catching up and enjoying her excellent company.  It reminded me of the huge village of runners there is out there who whilst they theoretically race against you, in reality, they will do anything to help out a fellow runner.

I finished the run actually feeling 'recovered', as in refreshed, better than I started and importantly mentally refreshed from getting to spend time with a wonderful person who I had had trouble finding the time to catch up with due to busy work schedules/kids and life in general.  Those moments passing the time on my run reminded me just how important that community of runners is and how much every person I have run with has influenced or made an impression on me.

Of course, having written my own training plan, I also took it as a fairly good sign that tapering was becoming a necessity.  Some argue a two week taper, others a three - I had dabbled between the two and assumed a small reduction three weeks out.   Needless to say I went home and slashed the following week's mileage by 30% and declared the start of taper.  Calling Q-Less to ask her if she minded me cutting her next week's hard runs was something of a no brainer.  She wasn't talking too clearly for some reason, but her mumbling sounded like she was agreeing - turns out she had actually managed to hit herself in the mouth with her own racket at tennis and her lip was swollen and black and blue - boy she was tired too.  Let the taper begin!