Thursday, March 26, 2009

ode to running

Sometimes, I start running and immediately want to quit. Sometimes my legs hurt, sometimes my breathing is hard, sometimes I just don't feel it. Less frequently, I feel fine but lose interest. Those are the times where I get out the door, down the road a while, and then realize it's fricken windy, or cold, or snowy--whatever it is I don't want to fight, not at all what I want to be doing at the moment. And there are always runs that suck. Flat-out suck. Like when I get home and think damn, every inch of that was like slogging through mud, breathing something much less oxygenated than air, moving muscles that feel like lead.

Sometimes, running feels like a chore. But those are just the bad times. And as much as I can, I try to run through those. If I can make it through 15 minutes of shitty running, I almost always find that it gets better. Barring any sort of debilitating injury, runs usually pick up as I go, as I find a rhythm.

And then there are the runs that make up for every single shitty run I will take, ever. Like Tuesday, running along the ocean in Rockaway, wind and ocean spraying in my face, cold and grey, flying over the sand, just me and the sea gulls, running and running and running and feeling invincible, like I could take on the entire world and be running, still, at the end. Or today, around and around and around Mount Tabor, up and down the hills, feeling tall and light and strong and around me, spring bursting from every single earthen pore. Those are the runs that make me glad that I slog through the shitty days. That's what I hold on to when I feel like staying on the couch.

2 comments:

Ian Rasmussen said...

Feeling tired and wanting to quit is your brain and your body trying to tell you that you should be at home eating pie instead. You should listen, but only if it's raspberry.

KatieGirlBlue said...

Hooray!

For me it's 10 minutes. If, on the bad days, I can get past 10, I can finish strong. If not, I go home.

Psyched for you.