Ten Good and Bad Things About Not Being Able to Run

This weekend I was supposed to be racing a half-marathon. I paid for it back in January. That race will mark my second Did Not Start (DNS) ever, and it will be swiftly followed by a 15K DNS on April 28. My first DNS was a 10-mile race I signed up for in 2006. My excuse then was that I had just found out I was pregnant with twins--I wasn't sad about missing that one.

Because I AM sad about missing these two races, I thought I'd better do some hard-core non-Terzah-like seeking of the positive. Number one, I am pleased to report, isn't negative at all. Two and three are pretty positive too. They may go downhill from there, though.

1. When I realized, yes, I WOULD be missing this race, I scheduled a trip to California, where I will be meeting two people I am very excited to see in person. They are:

My month-old niece, Lucy Anne!

And:

Caroline, the Canadian Runner in Exile

Who needs a half-marathon?

2. I am catching up on sleep in a serious way. It's true, I do get up early on some weekdays to get the recumbent bike sessions in. But since I'm sleeping in on the every other days off that I'm forced to be taking by the physical therapy process, I'm getting at least four hours more of sleep per week than I was getting when I was running and/or spinning six days a week. This feels GOOD.

3. I have more energy to pay attention to my diet, and it shows. I have gained no weight since the running interdiction. I'm continuing my "no sugar except on Sundays" thing beyond Lent. I still have cravings for sugar, but they are much abated. On Monday, the day after my Easter chocolate binge, I actually felt hung over. My mind seems to have finally learned that sugar is the reason for that lousy state--and has stopped asking for it. Today I sailed by the candy bowl at work and only later realized I....didn't....even....want....it.

4. Learning patience is no longer optional. I have to learn it in order for this never to happen again. And I never want this to happen again.

5. An easy 20-minute run is no longer something I would turn my nose up at. I'd be slavishly grateful to be able to do one, in fact. Small blessings, right?

6. I've been forced to slow down in many ways. This has not been a bad thing. But I'm learning that I'm really not a person who wants to slow down. When I can go fast again, I will. I need to remember point number 4 in the meanwhile, though. Sigh.

7. The last time I had this little control over what I wanted to do with my time was when I had two infants/toddlers. I like having control. Life doesn't always let you have control. Suck it up.

8. Boy, being injured does nothing for helping you become a nicer person. I'm jealous--GREEN WITH ENVY--of everyone running the Boston Marathon on Monday, the Bolder Boulder in May and just about any race you can name out there. True, I would not have been at Boston even had I not been injured. I haven't earned a spot. But at least I could have been working towards it.

OK, so that's not a good thing about not being able to run. I guess maybe learning about your own bad qualities is a good thing, because then you can work toward improving them. Except I'm finding it really hard to do that. I'm just....jealous, and likely to stay that way.

What would a good person do? Walk races, maybe. Volunteer. Go out and cheer other people on. I do plan to do the latter for Kathy and Cynthia and Jill and Julie (and virtually for others of you). You are friends and I want you all to succeed. But I don't want to walk races or volunteer right now. I just don't. I want to run. If I can't run and there's no one to cheer for, I'm staying home and doing my PT exercises for the umpteenth time.

9. I'm starting to resent the Facebook pages I've liked that have anything to do with running. I'm particularly sick of the one that says, "You either ran today or you didn't." Yeah, so I didn't. Can YOU come fix my back so I can, please? No? Then don't thrust that self-righteous statement in my face.

Maybe this will teach me to be less self-righteous toward non-runners. Maybe they have reasons we don't understand for not doing what they don't do.

10. I'm being more pushy with my husband about his running. Every day that he runs I make him share every detail with me. The hill was....how steep? And how much did you sweat? What did it feel like when you were done? Did you know there's a 5K at the Reservoir next week? Wanna do it? Can I watch?

It's sort of pornographic, voyeuristic, something.

Lucky thing, he still loves me. Even after nearly six weeks of me not being able to run, when I'm not loving myself so much.

Physical Therapy Ch. 5

It's almost Boston Marathon time, and the happy preparation tales have been out there for several weeks. Which makes the post I did last year even more relevant now than it was then. I wish I could say my character had improved some in a year, but I guess it hasn't.

Sometimes the task ahead of you isn't the task you want to work on. But you have to work on it anyway. And that brings me to......

Two steps forward.....one step back.......

It's now been five weeks since I began physical therapy.

Today, after a two-week hiatus, I had a visit with Sue. It was good timing because yesterday morning (Easter Sunday) I woke up with the worst pain I'd had since beginning the process of trying to make my back better. I don't know what I did to provoke it. I hadn't even been on the recumbent bike in two days due to the holiday craziness at my house (in-laws visiting, volunteering at the church potluck, two five-year-olds with three Easter egg hunts to attend) and the gym having odd hours.

Sue worked her magic with needles, adjustments and some massage-like manipulation, and I feel much better. She also said it wasn't a huge step backwards or anything dire--my sacro-iliac joint had gotten a bit out of alignment again. I don't have to step back my exercises or my time on the bike.

But it's deflating because I had been feeling much better in the days leading up to Sunday, enough that I could honestly have said the pain was the least I could remember having for a long time, enough that simple motions that have hurt for a really long time (like putting my elbows on my knees when sitting down, pushing in the clutch in the car with my left foot and twisting to watch behind me when backing out the car) were starting to...not hurt...at all. The PT exercises were starting to feel easier. The muscles in my lower abs are starting to feel more like muscles contracting and less like the twitch of a dying mouse (this at least hasn't changed!).

I told Sue all of that. She said I still need to take it easy this week, not add anything new, and let the latest issue unwind itself. The only new instructions are to do some mild stretches when I first wake up (knees to the chest, cat/cow) and, because I'm a stomach sleeper, put a pillow under my belly when I sleep to keep my back from arching. Had I come to her without Sunday's flare-up, she said she might have let me add some consecutive days on the bike and some new PT exercises--but now that won't be happening this week. I also asked her about the Bolder Boulder 10K (on Memorial Day) and, alas, it's not going to happen for me this year either.

She did say that we will probably be talking--soon, she said!--about transitioning me back to running. She mentioned the Alter-G and pool running, both of which would be an amazing treat to me. Pool running is the cheaper option since I belong to the rec center, but I might be willing to pay for (or even use one of my precious insurance-covered PT appointments for) a session or two on the Alter-G. It's just so much more like real running than slogging it back and forth in a pool (where music isn't an option).

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments and stories on my last post. I plan to reply to them all in the next couple of days (along with catching up with your blogs). Happy late Easter, everyone! I ate some sweets and I hope you all did, too.

Boston Envy

I had a roommate in college who used to say that guilt is an unproductive emotion. I disagree with that (maybe because of my Catholic upbringing). I think legitimate guilt over something done wrong can spur better behavior and purer motives in the future.

Jealousy, however, is another story.

Jealousy is a truly unproductive, crippling emotion. To use an unfashionable word, it's a sin. Yet it's a sin I commit and suffer from on a regular basis. I'm jealous of people who are better writers than I am, of people who are better looking, of people who are more carefree than I am, of people with fewer financial constraints than I have...and of people who don't suffer from jealousy and are always glad to revel without adulteration in the accomplishments and happiness of others.

Today, I'm jealous of everyone who is running Boston this year, who are running even in this moment as I type, jealous that they have done the hard work and are now living the dream. Whereas here I sit, the future uncertain, my recent race times too slow, the clock ticking toward 40, lots of work ahead that may never get me there.

It's ugly and adolescent, I know, but it's true. Reading the posts and the tweets and the news stories all weekend has sent the running part of me into a funk and stoked my jealousy into a noxious green flame. My quads--still sore from Saturday's run on the Mesa Trail--aren't helping my confidence.

All the old self-defeating questions are popping up: Why am I wasting my time? Only 10% of the running population can accomplish this. What, really, are the odds that I am in that group? Even if I work hard, hard work can only get you so far without talent...and if I had talent it would have come out a long time ago.....

Don't get me wrong. I'm hoping everyone I know who is running Boston has a great race, especially Jim of 50after40 (and from the way the pros did today, I bet they are all having a fantastic race!).

But it's hard to be the wallflower, watching the happy dancers.

At least at my advanced age I know enough to be ashamed of these feelings. So last night I decided to fight the jealousy with the only antidote to it that has ever worked for me: gratitude.

I'm not going to attempt to wax eloquent here about that. There's a lot of New Age talk about gratitude out there these days, most of it a lot of sound and fury. My approach to it was to write two thank-you notes: one to my spin teacher, Tammy, without whom I couldn't have run a half-marathon PR with a cold last month, and the other to Mei, a volunteer at the rec center who comes in to staff the childcare there a half-hour early because my bootcamp class starts before their regular hours.

There are plenty of other people I should write to as well: my husband, Dan, of course, for countless things, including putting up with me sneaking peeks at my blog or reading running books when I should be, oh, say, bathing our children; my friends Christine and Kathy; the eleven not-easily-bored souls who follow this blog regularly; and lots of others.

Thinking of these folks has definitely taken the edge off the jealousy, and the topic-du-jour will move on from Boston when the sun sets today. But I know jealousy and other forms of despair will be back.

The trick is to keep running through it, like I'll need to do with bad weather, sore legs and other obstacles. It might help me to write a thank-you note every day. After all, I'm lucky that I get to run, whether I ever make the Boston cut-off or not, that I have a family who loves me, that I am healthy and employed and live in a beautiful place.

The roads taken by others will not be my road. That's still unfolding at my feet. I need to trust that wherever and however it leads, I'll end up in the right place in the end.

Runner's Envy

I love following the people who are really good at this sport. Today the Cross-Country Nationals took place. You can see the results (and the blisteringly fast times) here. There were a lot of people from Boulder among the winners and Top 10-ers. Makes me proud to be passed here (and makes me wonder who was doing the passing)!

This seems like a good segue into one of my little issues: Runner's Envy. I am pretty much jealous--and I know it's totally fruitless and irrational, but it is what it is--of everyone who is better at this than I am. My jealousy is particularly focused on people who are in a similar situation to mine (i.e. a mom of small kids, a latecomer to the sport, an on-again-off-again dabbler, or some combo of those features) but have had more success than I have.

I'd venture to say that jealousy in some form is my greatest fault. Perhaps it's a consequence of mediocrity in many areas where I once had hope for myself, or where others once had hope for me. (I'm a bit nervous about my high school reunion this summer. I'm sure my "accomplishments" are nothing of the kind compared to those of others.)

Running is different. I've never been under any illusions that I have any great talent at it. And it's certainly not something that haunted my dreams as a young person. Yet I wouldn't be trying to get to Boston if I didn't have some late-blooming ambitions for my running.

Why is running so captivating for someone like me?

Some of it has to do with how running affects my outlook for the rest of the day. Weariness of the daily grind makes way for sunniness and gratitude. But much of the appeal is in the act itself, the way I feel during the last half of a run. Even when certain things are hurting--my bum foot (still need to call someone about that), or my calves--my head feels so good, so full of fresh oxygen and warm blood, and my skin feels so alive. I love the powerful feeling I get when I can pick up speed at the end. I love the fact that my new "I can finish this" distance has increased to two miles--meaning that when I'm within two miles of the end of a difficult effort, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will finish. At the end of the run I'm not worried about anything but moving my body forward some more.

Maybe that's where the jealousy comes in. Because when I'm feeling so strong and happy and alive, it's a bummer to be rendered second-class by labels like "mid-packer." It's tough to accept that no matter how hard I work, I'll never be as fast as so-and-so whom I see around, and who is no more of a pro than I am--but gets noticed by others because they have talent the talent to run 7 minute miles when I can run only 8 minuters. It makes me think I should leave it behind, and find a hobby where I have some chance of success that others will recognize and take vicarious pleasure in. Is success without recognition really success?

Then I have another of those magical runs (and most of them have been magical these days). They put the jealousy in its proper place, at least until I read a blog by or a news account of someone with real talent. Then the cycle begins again.

Until I mature past the point of jealousy (it can happen, right?), I'm trying to take each run as it comes: joy in the moment, a solitary surrender to something that will probably never reward me in ways the world measures but that some better part of me finds rewarding all the same. Hopefully that, and hard work, will be enough to help me make my anonymous way to Boston.

Here's today's 10 miler: