Sunday, February 7, 2016

The Unicorn starts to fade into the distance.....

For those who follow the gospel of Runners World there are several commandments successful runners need to follow to keep them on the straight and true path of distance running.  Thou shalt make a date to run with friends, its more fun and keeps you accountable.  Thou shalt follow a training plan so you are committed to various elements of that plan such as speed work, tempo or distance and stick to it. Thou shalt vary your courses and terrain, run hills, run flat, run road, run trail. Fill your social media feed with inspirational posts from fellow runners as well as professional and elite runners and salivate over their fast times wondering how you can possibly get close. Lastly, thou shalt register for a  big race and work diligently toward that goal, it will get you up at 5 am in the dark on the days you don't want to run!

Well the absolute reverse is true if you are trying to rehab and injury and you have to break all your 'good habits' and find some new ones. It was sad having to run alone all the time, but the reality was I could never say just how far I would get before the foot would hurt and the last thing you want to do would be to flake out on a friend after 4 miles and say you were walking; in reality you would press on doing more and more damage to the injury site. The only friend I can train with who truly doesn't care if I walk or go slow is Poppy - she just gets extra time on he trails if I am dragging. The training plan or rehab plan has to go entirely out the window as no matter how much you want to carefully build up there are days when it just hurts too much and you have to back down, or take a cross training day; I am finding I can tolerate maybe two or three runs a week at most, and it varies day to day. I can only run soft trail, and need to avoid extreme hills, leaving one location only for running. I no longer look at all the women my age 'killin it out there'; its kind of depressing frankly! And as for race registration.......

Two weeks of trying to build up my running and I was in worse pain than I had been.  The looming deadline of Boston, and the twelve week count down until race day weighed heavily on me all the time.  I was icing my foot every 3 hours trying to figure out how to lurch from run to run.  After another visit to the foot doctor who came up with the somewhat untested experimental idea of spinning my own blood for platelet rich serum and injecting it into the site of the tendon, then resting completely for 4 weeks while that healed - of course insurance wouldn't fund it as no one had actually done the double blind placebo study to prove it...if it was done to this he was really out of ideas. I called it TIME! I reluctantly realized that I would have to give up on racing Boston, despite the year and a half of planning, the effort of qualifying and lets not forget the expense of air fare and crazy hotel prices.

I briefly wondered if I should even go - it left a dull ache in the pit of my stomach at the thought of standing there cheering when I wanted to be running, would it be better just to lie low in Walnut Creek and focus on the home front.  A moment's reflection made me realize that there was no way I could leave Q-Less and Merciless running without being there to see it.  It was my idea that we all qualify to celebrate our 50th birthdays (well mine and Merciless'), here they were going through their own gargantuan struggles just to train.  The snow and cold in Blue Bell were as bad as ever, they had nine children between them, and both were also trying to work part time.  In contrast we have ideal training weather, I had one kid at home old enough to take care of himself and my part time job was well suited to running when ever I wanted, at work if I liked.  It didn't seem fair - on any of us, but the race was as much about celebrating our years of running and friendship and that could still occur whether I ran the race or watched.

The decision was hard, but once it was made it all felt a whole lot better.  A watched pot takes forever to boil, and if you stop fretting about an injury and release the pressure you are putting on it to 'heal dammit!' things automatically stop hurting as much. I even got a great run in with a friend and her two dogs this week, as she was also registered for Boston, but had health issues to consider too and didn't have expectations of time or distance.  As we ran through the puddles at conversation pace, three crazy dogs ahead leaping of us spraying mud and sandy showers, the pure joy of running seemed like a decent trade for race day glory!