Two Mile Miracle

Almost a month ago, I ran a marathon in Vermont. As I posted before the actual event, I was experiencing some significant pain in my left leg prior to the actual race that forced me to take almost a month off. As such, I lost approximately 2-3 weeks of peak training that I knew as much as I would loved to have thought otherwise would invariably effect my ability to run a fast marathon. And so, I went to Burlington without many expectations and while I managed to finish the race, I spent the last month sitting around stewing about the injury that made me unable to run the marathon like I can.

As well for the last month, I have not written anything here because frankly, I did not want to as I have been bummed out feeling like the previous 18 weeks of my life prior to the marathon rendered my training meaningless. Not helping matters was that even after taking two weeks off from running altogether immediately following the marathon, I was feeling no better than I did immediately before the marathon as the pain in my left leg persisted showing up whenever I tried to run. As a result, every step reminded me of my injury and began to make me wonder if my leg would ever get better. (and then of course I wondered if this would prevent me from ever running again.)

As of last week, I was not running with my only physical activity consisting of hobbling around a softball diamond or doing the white man shuffle up and down the basketball court. Oh and I made a meager attempt at returning to the gym to get rid of the B-cups that I am developing at the rate of young supple 12 year old girl... (I am kidding you sick pedophiles... about the young girl, but the man boobs are on like Donkey Kong.) I, also, began to look for a doctor as the people close to me began to worry if there was something a little more serious with my leg that needed to be looked at by a real doctor. (As stated before, I only play one on TV.) The good thing was that while I was searching for this doctor, I totally did not even attempt to run nor did I even think about doing it.

Actually, I did not think about running until on my way home from work today when I was getting sick of being lazy and feeling like a fat piece of shit. As such, on the walk from the subway to my apartment, I decided to run two miles just to see for one last if I could run without pain. And as luck or just shear stupidity would have it, I ran without pain in either of my legs for the first time in almost two months. It was only two miles, and I definitely was not burning rubber, but there was still no pain. Now, I know that this means nothing since I could very well wake up tomorrow morning with pain again, but atleast it is a first step to possibly starting to run again. As a result, I am going to try it again later this week, and just continue from there with an immediate trip to the doctor as my only recourse if I begin to feel pain again.

As for the marathon, I do not remember my place, but I will tell you that for the first 18 miles, I went out there and jammed on the gas maintaining a sub-8:00 minute pace for that portion of the race. Of course, after those 18 miles, I still had 8 remaining and needless to say, the wheels came off shortly after passing mile 18. While I managed to finish the final miles, the weird walk/run combination that I utilized in order to do so was the method of a man whose training was lacking significantly.

And then again, I still finished under four hours with a sub-9:00 mile pace, which is usually the average pace of a Team in Training member but still a finish. More importantly, what happened to me out there will stay with me for as long as I am able to run and serve as a lesson learned. But for now, I will settle simply for my runs every once and awhile as I slowly creep back to running normally again.