running may 2012

            As you know, I like to run.  It hasn’t always been thus.  There was a while back when I had knee pain.  So much so that I begged my sister to give the recommendation for a doctor who could give me an MRI in less than a week because I was leaving the country.  Because she knows everyone and she is a powerful person, or because I was just lucky, she DID help me find someone.
The problem was getting the results.  Three months down the road, after several signed affidavits that I was actually the one who was tested, I got the answer.  Inconclusive.  There might be some low level trauma (could be from an operation 25 years ago), he might be able to do something with physical therapy over a course of 10 months, or he be able to find something if he did an exploratory look-see with a ‘scope.  By this time, though, everything about the knee had vanished.  There was no weakness, no ‘locking,’ no ‘catching’ (as if a sock was in the hinges of a door), no pain.  It was as if the MRI did some kind of therapeutic number on the knee.

            A month later, I pulled some kind of muscle in my hip.  Someone had taken a baseball bat and whacked me in the butt.  Absolutely no definite injury…it just began to hurt.  A quasi-physical therapist/dyslexia expert/super mom showed me a stretching exercise.  Basically, I needed to get into some kind of position at which it could gently tug on the affected muscle.  I continued to play Ultimate Frisbee…and all of us are a bit wacko so I didn’t attract a huge amount of attention when, in the middle of a game, I would yell, “TIME OUT!”  I’d flop down on my back like a piece of grass flattened by a lawn mower, throw my left leg (or was it my right—see, I am so over this, I can’t even remember) up to my ear; and do a hip wiggle—like I was letting a bit of bodily gas so no one would notice.  At any rate, for about 6 months, I didn’t sprint.  I plodded along on my runs.  Sometimes, I didn’t even run; I just walked.  Now all you people out there who walk for exercise, don’t be upset, but I don’t understand.  I’ve heard the doctors say that 20 minutes of walking three times a week is enough to increase your heart rate and all—whatever.  Keep doing it and I’m sure you will outlive your grandmother.  But me, I need to run.  Walking fast does, in fact, get me sweating, but not like I’m running.

            Whatever happened, if there had been was some miracle MRI laser beam, or by divine intervention, a year after my knee put me on the ground because of its infirmity, I was running without fear.  Now, a couple years later, I end every run with a sprint—well, almost every run…there was a time on 17 April when I didn’t sprint because at the end of the run, my knee (the other one) talked to me like, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”  I didn’t.  In the past, I may have just to prove to the knee that it didn’t have control over me.  But at 46, I am fine giving my knee a bit of control. How do I know it was exactly 17 April?  Because I wrote it down.  I write down all my runs: where they are, about how many minutes, and the results of the sprint.  On 17 April, it says this:  E-burg, no sprinting b/c of knee, pull-ups 7x3 (the 7x3 means that I did three sets of seven pull-ups).   

            One great thing about living in a small town is that everything is nearby—within running distance.  I found that I can jog to the school track—an eight-lane asphalt beauty—where I know the distance.  I have been running a quarter mile—one lap .  I suppose nowadays, it is 400 meters—very close to a quarter mile.  When I was in high school, I would see boys from Crestland running the mile relay at the end of a track meet.  This event was when each of four boys would run once around the track.  I would see them on the opposite side of the track from where they begin.  They would be running like mad—sprinting.  I was a poor track athlete in that I thought you would need to pace myself when running once around the track—save some energy for later in the race.  I could never run as fast as I can, or sprint, ALL the way around the track.  Now, I can.  I may not run fast so fast, but I am running full speed, and I’m sure I can run circles around my high school self.  My legs feel more solid and stable even than when I trained for and ran two marathons.  At those times, my legs and all felt good, but not like tree trunks or anything.  I guess a tree trunk is not a totally positive metaphor when describing to a runner’s leg.

            So what about this final sprinting business?  How far over the top do become when I am trying to keep track of myself?  Well, in the last four of my journals are lists of the times achieved for the final sprints.  Some recent highlights:  On April 16, my first morning waking up at my house in Emmetsburg, I ran from 14^th street to the entrance to my garage in 1:09.31 (that’s one minute, 9 seconds and 31 hundredths of a second).  Other final times are 1:06. 99, 1:03.27, and 1:01.14.  On Friday, I achieved my record of 58.57.  I try to find a distance that I can run in about a minute…I really have to bust my butt, but I can make it.  In Panora and in Tirana, I was able to find an uphill to run for the final sprint.  Uphill is the best direction to run, not because it is more difficult, but because the wear and tear on the body is less.  I was running a new course on Sunday and tried sprinting downward for about 300 yards.  It was terrible.  Pound the knee, pound the ankle…stop running and begin to walk.

            My times on the high school track have not been so pleasant.  The first lap was 77.38 seconds, then 78.53, then 80, then 79.67.  My goal of 60 seconds seems unattainable..

To those people who might have some interest in prose and literature, or to those who are simply still reading this, what do you think of this style?  Were there too many details?  Not enough details?  Were the digressions too numerous to the point of distraction, or did they add flavor?  What part had you saying “What?” and what part had you saying “Yes!”