Running for Your Life: Week Nine

Is it just me, or do young people have more middle-aged types of ailments than, say, twenty years ago, or even five years ago. M tells me that I’m a freak of nature, that I’m built like a tree, a red oak, like the one in our backyard that seems pretty much indestructible. I don’t know so much about that. Thing is, I’ve been running for my life, so I’m not sure what is nature or nuture.

What I do know is that a lot of the young people I know have bona fide medical issues. Weak ankles from high school varsity basketball, inexplicable spine pain that is exacerbated by extreme changes of weather. Then, of course, there are the allergies. So many, so intense. Invariably keeping them from getting started in a serious exercise regimen. “I’d loved to run,” they say, “and if not for this cranky knee I got from high school football, I certainly would. Definitely, I’d be out there. I read the news, I know how good it is for you.”

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Like the online news story recently that detailing routes to happiness. One, of course, threads through jogging. Whoever came up with that result doesn’t run in my neighborhood, though. I counted once, taking my own survey. And, I know this is unscientific, but I have been running for 30-plus years, so let’s just say it seems right. But of the 73 runners I passed, or who passed me, only four seemed even remotely happy. Most showing that pained, flat stare reserved for the morning commute, the one in which your never get a seat on the subway.

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One more week. That’s all, before the Steamtown Marathon. If you were to ask me if I am in the kind of shape I was in when I did my personal best in Pittsburgh, 3:47:42, which put me through this madness of running through the hottest summer on record in New York, damned if I was going to let a raging sore foot stop me, I’d have to honestly say, I just don’t know. I had hoped to get in one more run, Running to Harlem, I would have called it, along the Hudson River, but the foot pain changed my mind. My left forefoot is still tender. M thinks it might be a bone spur, and I’m going to finally make an appointment with a podiatrist in Week Ten. That long run, I was convinced, would have set me up for a damn good shot at not only qualifying for the Boston Marathon, but the New York Marathon, too. For Boston, I need to do better than 3:45, for New York, 3:30. Now, it’s a crap shoot. I’ll need to get perfect running weather on October 10 in Scranton to even have a ghost of a chance of making the grade. And if I don’t, will I keep doing the blog? That was the idea wasn’t it, write through this training, this marathon, and then on to Boston. A year ago, I never would’ve dreamed that I could ever have run in the elite long-distance run in the world: the Boston Marathon. But now it seemed to be at least within my grasp.

That is until I turn my left ankle on Tuesday of Week Nine. Altering my gait, doing heel strikes to stop the forefoot pain, my mind off the road for just a second, I landed in a funny way and that was it. In tapering it is all about being careful, and I wasn’t. I nearly go down, then hobble a few strides before I keep going. I don’t feel the forefoot ache for the shooting pain in the right foot, just in front of the ankle, which I imagine is turning blue. The foot’s snug in my Brooks, but it’s injured, for sure. As I continue now, as careful as I can be, I only hope it is not too bad. That 12 days before the marathon, I haven’t wasted almost five months of training.

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My first writing job was at The Prescott Journal, a weekly with the catchline, “News of the Friends You Know,” located in an historic Ontario town along the St. Lawrence River whose claim to civic originality is a summer event called Loyalist Days in which Independence Day remains an affront. Here, I wrote a column called Corner Sports, and in May 1979, penned my first feature article, with the unadorned, staid Loyalist label “(Staff)” and a 90-point main headline “JOGGING,” extolling the virtues of aerobic exercise.

In those days, I read D.H. Lawrence, “Sons and Lovers,” and “Women in Love,” and “The Idiot” by Dostoyevsky, sitting in the window well of a Victorian-style apartment with a view of the St. Lawrence. At night, the freighters winked past while I read, caught up in the dream of one day being a writer, but sure that if I stayed true to my love for running and reading, too, that I’d be happy. And maybe, if I was lucky, stay in good health. That is, if I could keep these passions – running, reading and writing – in balance.

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I purposely took my shoe off in the dark. I didn’t want to see the blueness, the mild sprain of my right foot. If I keep my balance, I’m fine, but if I shift my weight to the side of the foot, the lateral band, it hurts. It hurts like hell.

Next: Running for Your Life: Last post before Steamtown