Running is Cheaper Than Therapy

Not being able to go six days without something can be either a sign of great love, or great addiction. When I was out there for the first time since last Tuesday I was metaphorically head over heels, but leading up the run I was certainly jonesing pretty badly. I'd been meaning to hit the pavement pretty much every morning but hangovers and lack of sleep got in my way every time. From staying out until 3:30am after my volleyball match on Wednesday to a birthday party on Friday to a cookout and a birthday party on Saturday I have not been in any shape to lace up. But even when I was lying prone on my bed unable to roll out and order some day-after-drinking-Indian-food I wished I was pushing myself up Prospect Park hill. I feel like I'm at an odd place right now. Nights like Wednesday - random weekday drinking with some friends and some friendly strangers - are what my early years in New York were built upon. And moments with friends Friday night and all day Saturday are the kind I've rarely turned down any time in my adult life, unless I had scheduling conflicts. I'm not quite at the point where I'd trade these times for a good hour and a half around the park at 6 A.M. but I do think I'm closer to that point than I've ever been. Especially after days like today. Long, grueling days of work that involve staying late, stressing out about the mountain of time-sensitive projects that never seems to dwindle, and having mild panic attacks about the direction my life is taking. Until recently such days would have had me bee-lining for the closest bar stool (or for the bar stool closest to my apartment) but today all I could think about was getting home, strapping on my shoes, balling up all of the shit that had been building in my head all day, and running it into the ground.

Sometimes Terrible Runs Happen

Jeez, this morning was all kinds of trouble leading up to a pretty disappointing 1 mile run - which was about a third of what I was trying to do.

I woke up at 5:30 - fifteen minutes earlier than usual because I find that 5:45 roll-out-of-bed-and-run doesn't allow me enough time to warm up/loosen my legs and I end up with leg cramps at two miles. Instead of taking advantage of the extra time I rolled around in bed trying to get together enough momentum to overcome the inertia of sleep, not actually getting up until the first Snooze on my alarm. Then my morning shit took its time to hit me. I try to never do a morning running without taking the morning shit because running tends to wake up my bowels and Brooklyn doesn't seem like a place to wind up like this woman.

Long story short I didn't end up leaving my apartment until 6:30, and because I'm a genius I didn't take any of that extra time to stretch so as I was walking down my stairs I could just feel it in my legs that this is going to be a bad run. My calves felt incredibly tight and since I was so late I just did a few leg kicks and high-knees before I started. My legs immediately felt bad and did not loosen up at all during the first mile, and this fractured my concentration to the point where I couldn't just power through it. I ended up turning around at .8 miles, and only made it 1.3 before I had to walk back.

Hopefully this was just a result of humidity and an 8-day lay-off.

Shitty runs happen, but the important thing is how you react to them. Tomorrow I am to be up again, bright and early (well, early at least, before it gets bright), ready to try my three mile pre-work loop again. Hopefully more hydrated, hopefully looser, hopefully even more determined to not let that A.M. inertia get the best of me.

Run easy.

Hello World

Writing and running have always had a calming affect on me even though, while I'm doing both, they seem like arduous tasks punctuated by bursts of euphoric, manic inspiration. Mind and body exercises wherein I'm always trying to squeeze just a little something more out of myself; just a little something better. This summer a hectic a brutal work schedule (poor excuse, but there it is) has left me writing far less than I'm comfortable with, and the intense heat wave this week (mediocre excuse, but there it is) has left me with zero runs in seven days for the first time in several months.

I suppose this blog is a way to combine these two things that center me and give me a sense of clarity, and also an attempt to spur myself into doing both more often. I think being paired with writing will make me enjoy running even more as I work through how and why I run how I run, focusing my thoughts while I'm out on the road. I also think the exercise will immensely help my writing as I tend to overthink and overwork everything I put on a page. This blog that I don't really plan to show anybody about an activity that I do mostly by myself will give me a chance to write freer, I think. I hope that I'll let myself ramble more, and explore more. And maybe, just maybe, it'll give me some measure of relief from the near abject helplessness I tend to feel when staring at a flashing cursor on a blank screen - or at a blank sheet, pen in hand. I expect most of these to be fairly simple updates outlining my runs and times, but hopefully I'll occasionally come up with something thoughtful.

So here's to writing, and to running, and to really finding out who I am with both of them.

Run easy.