The Crawl back to Running
- lennylucas
- Jan 11, 2020
- 3 min read
I've been a runner for 25 years. The last 19 of those saw a rotating door of the same few injuries that set me on a path of not running for long periods of time - knee bursitis, Achilles tendonitis, severe ankle twists, shin splints, and whatever you call it when you lace shoes too tight and the top of your foot hurts like a pointy brick perpetually sits there. No running for long periods didn't necessarily mean no activity but different types. This abrupt change of direction - the proverbial pendulum swing - manifested as an insidiously infecting love for biking. That's not a bad thing, until that resulted in always defaulting to biking. This is where I found myself recently.
I typically get back into running once winter unofficially sets in, especially to train for fun (finger air quoted "fun") winter races like the Frozen Snot. But this time was the hardest. Mea culpa - I defaulted to biking so much in 2019 that my strong leg muscles became bike-specialized and the oft-forgotten but critical stabilizer muscles atrophied from the focus on low impact riding. Without running, I literally become weak. This was exacerbated by low motivation to do strength training or general fitness workouts. Turns out cross-training is a thing that I need to embrace, not necessarily with running or lifting, but with activities like hockey, tennis, and capture-the-flag games for their forced intensity and powers of restorative non-sagittal plane (e.g., always forward) motion. I don't want to call it a New Year's resolution, but my mindful near-term improvement is to be more mindful of workout balance.
For anyone who's so good at quitting and restarting running (like any seasoned smoker who quits so often that their mantra is that it's so easy, they've done it a thousand times), you may dread the first month or so until running is "easy" again. What is "easy" running? It's the earned state of being able to lace up at a moment's notice and quickly converge to a comfortable pace that can be held almost indefinitely with the mileage just clicking by like seconds on a clock. Good thing I love running so much that since breaking through that running-is-hard barrier about a week ago, it's all I think about doing during my time off. So if this non-winter winter weather persists, I'll be struggling with balance, AGAIN, if I simply default to running without a healthy does of the winter types of cross-training, a la XC skiing or snowboarding. The pendulum swings.
No matter the outcome, the feeling after a good run is always truly worth lacing up for and has a 100% success rate of making me feel better than when I started. It does so in a way that contrasts to the same effect from biking in that biking's characteristic "in motu" happiness curve is peaks above increased baseline while running bears a signature crescendo with a near orgasmic finale. Ahem, I said NEAR! I don't like to violate running shorts that way. But that happiness crescendo emerges only if you've broken that running-is-hard barrier. If I could bottle the more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts combination of mental and physical transformation induced by run workout endorphins, I'd be a rich man. And then end up a harbinger of egregiously upsold humanitarian drugs like disgraced Martin Shkreli. Boo current me for setting up future me for social failure. Hiss.
When I run solo I typically use the opportunity to absorb the surroundings in a way that the speed of biking smears otherwise differentiable moments in time together. I see you, bird who's just landed on that tree branch and flapping a single wing in a meaningful way that I can't understand but contemplate many interpretations. I see the decrepit, eroded yard decorations of my neighbors, whic improves my confidence about my front yard situation. For those kinds of solo runs, it's a time to relax and think. Or - pendulum swing - to turn off the organic electrical storm that is my brain's overstimulated monkey machine and produce speed at the restorative cost of not being able to prioritize the mundane shit I need to do at home later or observe that sidewalk crack that will revolve that injury door to the twisted ankle occupant. Sigh. Pendulum swing.
The worst part of injury is that I don't get to see my friends when I'm at home wallowing in self-defeat and covered in KT tape with parts of my body icy cold and above my head. The second worst part is realizing that I now have the time to clean up my front yard. So I'm enjoying the life crescendo of happiness from the privilege of running with my friends, even if we don't push the pace so hard as to swing a pendulum.
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