Marathon Monday!!

With all of the craziness of the Boston Marathon swirling around the city this weekend, I thought this would be a good time to discuss my attempt to start running again. I started a few weeks ago. I hadn't really wanted to tell anyone for fear that I could fail in some way (although I don't even really know what that would look like...getting hurt again I guess) But it's true. I'm getting back out there, pounding the pavement if you will, and trying not to injure myself in the process. It sounds sort of silly but I think a lot of my anxiety around running was totally mental (KNOCK ON WOOD!!) Every time I would even think about running my physical therapist's face would pop into my head and my knee would start hurting. Completely psychosomatic. But the look he had when he pushed down on my quad and my knee popped right out with virtually no effort at all, well that was enough to keep me away from running forever.

It wasn't enough to keep me from thinking about running though. 2007 was probably one of the best years I've ever had: I completed my Masters in Social Work, I got my first job out of school that I loved, I got my LCSW, things were going well with Tony, and I had trained and completed a half marathon while raising over $2100 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I felt accomplished and I was happy. Sure, the half marathon was only part of it, but getting up at 5:45 almost every morning to train with my friend Leslie for four months, well that was a pretty large chunk of my year. I felt like one of those "good" people. You know, those people who remember to bring their reusable bags to the grocery store, and raise money for charities and run with their dogs...okay, well I don't know that I will ever consistently remember to bring my reusable bags, but the point is, I felt like I was becoming the person I wanted to be.

I am so far from that now, and I'm not really sure how I lost my way.

So maybe running through the pain and anxiety of getting hurt will get me back to where I want to be (hmmm... this seems to be sounding like a metaphor for relationships somehow...) Yes, sometimes my knee feels like it's just floating around in my leg, as though it is not attached to anything at all. And yes, sometimes it hurts, a lot. And yes, a lot of the time, I think to myself, "I hate running, why am I doing this??" But the truth is, I don't hate running, I actually sort of like it when the music is so loud that it drowns out everything else in my head and I'm moving forward at a snails pace (I am painfully slow. No, seriously.) When I run a race, even though I am often one of the very last people on the course, I feel accomplished, like I am doing something worthwhile with my time, with my life. I once had someone tell me that "pain is not an indication that something is wrong." I thought he was crazy at the time, but maybe it's true, maybe it's just another thing to run through.