Runners High

It's funny how sometimes life can sometimes be seemingly so bad, and how it ends up being all right in the end.  Take the first ten days of May for example.  2008 has been one of the most stressful and hardest years (even harder than 2006 when my sole mode of transportation for six months was a bike) I've had in a looooong time.  The whole graduation debacle (I screwed up big time, and I take full responsibility for that) put in a downward spiral that at times seemed would continue for a while.  Unfortunately, I didn't grasp the magnitude of the fall I was in until I was laying face down on the ground.

For the last couple of years I have toyed wiith the idea of running a marathon.  Unfortunately, life seemed to get in the way and I continued to run my 3 - 10K's.  When I heard that a club from school was planning on going to Eugene in May to run the Eugene Marathon, I figured that it might be the right time to try it.  I'll be the first to admit that I had done too little during Winter Break and the first month of the semester to keep my fitness level up, so like the idiot I can be sometimes, I ran a 40 mile week my second week into training.  Needless to say, it didn't work, and I sidelined myself for almost a month with a severe case of shinsplints.  It got so bad, that I'd wake up at night and have a shooting pain up my leg.  After a miserable couple of weeks, I decided the best thing to do was to rest and hope the pain would subside.

Good news, bad news.  The pain was better that before I stopped running, but it still made itself known during my runs.  Problem now was, I had less than a month till the marathon, and I had shin splints and a nagging quad pain caused by changing my stride to compensate for the shin pain (its a wonder I made it through the runs).  I won't lie, I though about quitting a couple times, just shutting down and resting until there was no pain, but with everything I wsa dealing with with school and such, I knew quitting would make things worse, so I bucked it up and fought through the pain, hoping that eventually the muscles and such (I'm not convinced it was solely shin splints) would grow stronger and I'd be able run a respectable marathon.

Long story short, after probably my best weekend in a while (I didn't have to work after all), I was able to complete the marathon with my head held high.  It was a great start to my month of May, a month that I dedicated to a new beginning.  Although I'd dug myself a deep hole at school and at work, I came back from Oregon with a revitalized spirit, I was ready to take on the world again.  The van ride back from Oregon (actually the getting in and out of the vans) was a sight as we all hobbled around on broken down legs.  I figured in my condition (I had to walk the final 4-5 miles because of killer cramps in both calves and a hip pointer from trying to run through the cramps) I wouldn't be running for a least week (in hindsight, probably should have taken at least 3-4 days).  But tuesday after the marathon I laced up my shoes and went for a delicate 2 mile run, where I tried Josh's run 4 walk 1 trick (IT WORKS!!!).  I continued to run through the week and come Saturday, I was lined up at the starting line of the Sonoma County Human Race 10K.  Now, I've run this race twice in the past and actually did worse last year than I did when I ran it before (I also had not finished without walking either time).  This year, I just wanted to run and let whatever happened, happen (I actually had one goal, beat my 70 year old former track coach Daryl, the guy can still run).

I started out steady, knowing the front of the course was loaded with hills.  Kids flew by, old guys went by, but I kept my pace.  A couple of miles into it, my calves started to bark; I noticed but told myself that the pain now was nothing like that at mile 25 the weekend before, so I just kept plodding on.  At some point I realized that I pacing about a 50 minute 10K, only about 10-15 seconds of my PR for the course and a minute slower than my overall PR.  As we started coming down hill I started to pay closer attention to the mileage and pace, and at mile 5 I took off.  This isn't something I'm accustomed to doing, I generally tell myself I need to pick it up in the last stretch, but I generally wait too long, this time it just felt right.  As I crossed the finish line I gave a little fist pump (something I had wanted to do in Eugene but was too darned tired to do).  After a great weekend the week before, I figured I wouldn't come close to that feeling for a while.  But as I ran through the "hometown" crowd, it just felt right.  All my stresses and bad feelings all seemed to just fall off there at the line, like an invisible shower there to keep me on the right path.

Now, as we enter summer (final summer break of my life) I have a renewed sense of myself and my priorities.  While I need to work and need the money, its running that really keeps me going, even if I don't win the race.  I thought my next marathon would the SF Marathon in August, but, I've decided that if my legs feel good after finals week, I'm going down to San Diego and running the Rock 'N' Roll Marathon June 1st.  You only have one life to live, so you might as well do the things you like/want to do while you can because you never know what tomorrow brings.

Rock On-