Day 2, 08/30/2012: I feel older than dirt!

2 miles in 24:37, 4 mi for the month, 4 mi for the year

When taking a straw poll of body parts for this afternoon’s stagger through the heat, my thighs voiced a painful and resounding NO!  I went anyway, it was just a poll after all not a democratic vote.

The hot breeze was the same, the hot pavement was the same, the hot heat was the same, so I took a different route.  I started by shuffling uphill from the office and turned towards Walmart.  I came back to industrial after turning at some storage units.

My thighs were very stiff and protesting when I started, it was all I could do to not appear to limp to the cars and the old ladies on walkers that passed by me on my way uphill.  I did achieve some degree of looseness, but I never reached a stride.

I just plodded along and tried to keep myself from leaning back and heel striking rather than mid-foot striking.  A little thing I know, but each little thing now is a battle that does not need to be fought as hard later.  I am simply looking to push through and give myself fewer comparable excuses to use the next time my body votes no.

The positives for this run were that I control my food strike reasonably, and I remembered how to use my chronograph (I had learned after yesterday’s run, but with my memory 24 hours is an impressive stretch for recollection).  The negatives were that I shuffled like an old man pretending to be an even older man.  I wanted to be a curmudgeon and complain with every feeble step, but I just fell into the mechanics of it instead.  For me, I love when as my body approaches the machine state of running.  I have a long way to go til I get there, but each little tick mark of progress in that sense feels good.  Let’s see what tomorrow brings now.

Day 1 08/28/12: 1st Run at 50

2.0 mi Run, 2.0 mi Week, 2.0 mi Month, 2.0 mi Year

Step-by-step is the way it always restarts for me.  Putting on my running shorts and lacing up my shoes, opening the door stepping outside, one foot in front of the other.  Today was the first time I had done this in over two years.

What has kept me trying and failing through the recent years has been the recollections of how I was able to run, how the tapping of my feet in a brute staccato over roads and through trails sounded in a youth that is grander in memory than it was in person.  This has become the greatest excuse for giving up; I am not who I once was.  It is an ego I don’t wish to continue paying for, I don’t need to be who I was, I rather like who I am now.

The thought that I could do this if I don’t over do this was a mantra as I walked out into ninety-three degree air with a low breeze heated by the blacktop which failed to bring any comfort.  I walked around for a minute, loosening up more mentally that physically.  I wanted the road and path, and was afraid of them at the same time.

Age first reared its head before I even started my run.  In a rusty yet familiar gesture I raised my left wrist and greeted it with my right hand.  However, rather than easily enacting a rote pressing of buttons to start my stop watch, I froze.  I didn’t remember how to start the watch, and worse yet, I could not read the miniscule writing about the face which would remind me how to start it.  Instead, I had to commit the time of day to memory before I headed out, after all I was better suited to being timed by a calendar rather than a watch at this stage anyway.

The first strides were easier than I had thought they would be.  There was no awkwardness from lack of use, there was no break down of muscle memory.  What was difficult and nearly did bring me to my knees was the only major hill on my route (i.e. a slight rise over a quarter mile that was a literal mole hill that became my figurative mountain).  I “crested” the uphill with no small amount of effort, and had to talk myself through the last two hundred yards rather than collapse in a pathetic out-of-breath heap.  When I did stop I had completed my two mile trek in roughly eighteen minutes, and with the exception of some coughing and profuse sweating I think I did well.  I think I will step out in my running shoes again soon.