Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Feeling Like a Runner

Late last week, I took a bit of a risk and ran for a longer distance...8 minutes. WOOHOO! It felt really good. The day was warm and I was in shorts, and I even begin to feel like a runner.

The next day, I decided to push things and determined to run for a full 30 minutes. The Achilles actually felt great. The rest of my body hurt (I need an adjustment really badly). The following day was 40 minutes.

I can't tell you how good it feels to actually be out running...in shorts...on the trails. Tomorrow is my first run with someone else (excluding the jogging I did with my 11 year old son). I am giddy like a school girl.

I wish I could say I am completely pain free, but that is not yet the case. I pushed things pretty hard in the gym yesterday and really worked the balance work. I find that this catches up to me. While it is lots of fun standing on Bosa balls and catching rebound balls, it does push my ankle around.

Monday, May 3, 2010

"To sleep, perchance to dream" (Hamlet)


Saturday night's 10,000 at Stanford was incredible. Chris Solinsky became the first "white guy" to break 27 minutes and Simon Bairu smashed Scheibler's record. Awesome.


I think that the image that stuck in my mind was of Bairu embracing Solinsky at the end. It reminded me of the amazing, almost intoxicating feeling of finishing a hard race and being exhilirated by the results. Seeing this image and the video was inspiring. It made me miss the commaraderie of running and the joy of racing. I have to say that I have toyed with the notion of never racing again. I have doubted my ability to "want it" bad enough at this stage of my life to hurt like I know racing requires. But this race inspired me to want to return to racing. This embrace inspired me to be part of a running group again.
Last night, I had two very vivid dreams. In the first, I was at a track late at night under the floodlights. There were packs of runners doing mile repeats, and although I couldn't tell you who they were, I knew that I knew them. I had an irresistable urge to hop in and see if I could keep up for a quarter. But there was a lot of people on the track and I was never able to get in the group to run with them. I tried two or three times and then gave up, blaming the fact that I was wearing training flats and they were in spikes.
The next dream was at a road race and the scenario was the same. Friends were racing and I just had to see if I could keep up for a couple of minutes. I tried to jump in, but by the time I did, I was about 10-15M behind the pack. I tried to catch them, but it was late in the race and I knew that they would be finishing soon. I pulled to the side and watched them finish.
Perhaps these dreams were my sub conscious telling me that even if I wanted to rejoin the group, I would never be able to catch up. Perhaps it was my sub conscious expressing how much I miss being in the pack. Either way, I awoke wishing that these were not just dreams. I was wishing that I was back.
Today, I did two run jogs (30' of 5' run/1' walk in the morning and then another 20' of the same in the evening). I will probably be sore, but it beats just dreaming of running.