[raw]toesday

let’s just start by saying i’m taking a ‘mandatory vacation’ and leave it at that, and therefore have the opportunity to sit here with 2 ice packs on my knees and keep my raw toes up.

tmi you say? well i’m sorry for the visual but my toes are raw. and my knees are sore. and i could not sleep last night from the aches in my body. good aches? perhaps. so what do you do when you can barely walk, much less run, and have too much time on your hands? you get tired of daytime tv, listen to music, check your facebook constantly and attack the stack of running books that have been staring at you for 3 months that you just did not have time for.

they are all basically the same in essence. gear, training, do’s and don’ts, nutrition blah blah blah. hey and don’t get me wrong, i’m not disrespecting them but i guess i was looking for answers. perhaps i’m looking in the wrong places.

i was chatting with a friend of mine and told her i had a bad run. she did not understand. like me she thought that you trained in a progressive, consistent and linear manner and that you would improve in the same manner. i was looking for a reason as to why i had a bad run. as to why i had more than one bad run. as to why i have been having a month of bad runs. i still am.

i guess the last time i remember running and smiling and breezing through it was late march for that infamous ‘big 1-0 before the big 3-0’. i had been running consistently and been in front of the pack. my breathing was great, my pace was steady, and i could hold a conversation. the next day after that i went down with the flu and nothing has been the same since. health crap, work crap, life crap. it all came down. did it affect me? probably. but it did much more. it stopped me. i believe there was at some point a valid physical exhaustion but then that became my crutch. one thing is listening to your body, another is using it as an excuse. i was trying to ‘run it out’ but i couldn’t. i was getting to the runs stressed, worried, anxious. i don’t remember completing a run, (much less successfully) until yesterday (and that is still debatable).

what goes through my head when i run? what psyches me out? first of all the first 2 or 3 miles are the hardest for me until my body warms up. and that is a given. if i can make it past mile 3 i’m good. heat psyches me out. when i overheat to the point where my skin hurts, feeling thirsty (and don’t say – just drink water. its just weird, its like i can’t satisfy it), and falling to the back of the group. those ‘little things’ take me out of my zone. please remember i am not a competitive runner. and i am by NO means fast. but my ‘zone’ is the place i can keep my cadence, my breathing, transform the aches on my legs to ‘numbness’ so i just keep going, ignore the blisters on my feet, and most importantly find my ‘happy place’.

running shoes bring out a storm of emotions that unfortunately don’t come with an instruction manual. i have had moments when i’m just staring at the houses we are running by, am just quiet and listening to the others chit chat, am thinking of the latest boy drama, am freaking out about the latest pimple on my forehead or how tight my jeans were this morning, thinking about quitting and running a half because i’m not good enough, maybe re-enacting a conversation in my head, thinking about wtf i’m doing in cali when i was in nyc a year ago, oh, and my personal favorite, the temper tantrum i threw at mile 11 on my 17mile makeup run where i just stopped, said ‘i don’t want to run’ and kicked the fence. i mean, this coming from someone who is not a morning person and will wake up at 530 in the morning to go run 10 miles.

there is no telling what goes through my head. but the ‘suk it up and keep running’ mantra doesn’t seem to be working lately and THAT is my problem. after my nasty run on sunday someone on the team approached me and suggested that maybe i should run the half. that thought had NEVER crossed my mind before. but needless to say on monday around mile 9 i started to consider it and i started to break down. i hadn’t finished a run in what like 3 weeks? coach’s answer.

Can I be blunt? Let's tell your head to f*k off. You are capable of anything and if your head gets in the way, call me anytime. Be proud whether you run the half or the full but do NOT think for a second that you can't do the full.

so i’m sitting here with my ‘war wounds’ thanking javier for being more stubborn than i am, thanking the coach for recognizing that the static in my brain is screwing with me, searching for answers that i probably wont find, reading about formulas that are not for everyone and hoping that when i kicked the fence on monday i kicked that roadblock that made me forget why i run.

in the meantime? i’m in the market for some toe socks.