Me Fail English?!

When I was living in North Jersey and part of the running group in Mahwah, one of the members was a guy named Dave (I think).  Nice guy, easy to converse with, even joined our indoor rock climbing group a few times.  What I remember most about him is his injury during marathon training.  When Dave (I think) didn’t show up for the group run one night, I asked if anyone knew why.  ”Oh, yeah, he’s out,” someone said with a sad tone.  Turns out he had two stress fractures in one leg and another in the other leg.  He had overtrained, ran way more miles than his body could handle and ended up not being able to run the marathon.

All of that popped into my mind the first time my legs ached after I started running again two and a half months ago.  It popped into my mind again this morning when I woke up and everything south of my waist felt really sore.  Now that I’ve gotten past the mental hurdle of remembering how much I enjoy running and stop talking myself out of doing it, the new hurdle is not getting carried away and overdoing it.

But for me, that’s always been the trick.  If something’s feeling off and I decide to skip that day’s run, am I being prudent or just talking myself into laziness again?  Because if the last 4ish years are any indication, I’m really, really good at talking myself into laziness.  Sadly, not a marketable skill.

On a completely unrelated note, I saw the first dead goose of the year on the side of the road yesterday.  If you don’t know my area (which applies to almost every single person that’s actually in my life, let alone any strangers reading this), there are a ton of geese and ducks wandering about most of the year.  Combine that with how stupidly oblivious most drivers act anymore, I expected to see more pancaked fowl before now.

Stuck In My Head Song of the Run:
Tuesday, August 3:   “Piano Man” – Billy Joel.  Another case of not having a clue why this popped into my head in the first place.  My subconscious must have been reminiscing about the days of my childhood after we got our first CD, which means this or “Invisible Touch” by Genesis would inevitably be the choices.

Wednesday, August 4:  ”Satin in a Coffin” – Modest Mouse.  After the last two runs, this one actually makes sense given I listen to Good News for People Who Love Bad News often.  For me, the interesting bit came when I sat down to write this post.  I realized I didn’t know the name of the song.  In fact, I didn’t know the names of any of the songs on that CD except “Bukowski”.  How can I listen to a CD 20+ times, if last.fm is a valid barometer, and not pick up on almost any of the song names?

After yesterday’s Union match, I went to the Pour House for a little while.  Maybe a half-hour after arriving, I noticed the three guys near me at the bar were talking about running.  Two of them left soon after and I started talking to the remaining one.  Part of the conversation involved me reminiscing about some marathons and team relays of what now seems so long ago.  Overall, it was a good time and I hope I see him at the bar again sometime in the future to see how he’s progressing.

It appears the trip down memory lane shifted my outlook on today’s run, in good ways and bad.  I developed a pretty bad stomach ache about two miles in and thought about cutting things short.  But then I thought back to races and runs where I’ve dealt with much worse in terms of discomfort over longer distances and finished, so I realized I need to re-learn to suck it up and finish what I started.

On a related note, the stomach ache reminded me of the important lesson of don’t drink so damn much the night before a long run.  Thursday and Sunday nights, no problem.  Friday nights, I could probably get away with it.  But Saturday nights about going to be more about movies and reading and less about Jolly Pumpkin Luciernaga and Sly Fox Royal Weisse.

The bad part of last night, besides the stomach ache, manifested after the run, when I was putting the info into dailymile.com.  Out of habit, I clicked on the ‘long run’ tag.  After all, it is Sunday, when I usually do the long ones, and I ran 5.64 miles, which based on my recent running, is the farthest I’ve run since April 2009.  I did the same thing last week when I ran 4.65 miles.  But today, I thought, “Really?!  You’re calling that a LONG run?!”

I want to be rational and say yes.  At this point of my life, my re-entry into running, it is a lot of running.  I’m trying to remind myself that the days of running five miles as a weekday run (at a much, much faster pace, too) are a lot of fatty foods, pints of beer and excuses to talk myself out of running ago.  And I know if I continue at my current pace of getting back into shape, I’ll return to those levels in another month or two.  Well, distance-wise, at least.  The speed aspect will take longer.  Which may end up being another round of ‘Holy crap, you suck now!  Why aren’t you the runner you used to be?!’  Really looking forward to that.

Stuck In My Head Song of the Run:  The theme song from Firefly.  Which make little sense since I haven’t watched an episode of the show in weeks.  Plus, it’s a 52 second song.  I ran for almost an hour.  It got a little repetitive.  But apparently not repetitive enough to compel me to start running with my iPhone.