I should have known better. It’s against my better judgment to train with the dog. As a puppy maybe. Or when I wasn’t in training. Perhaps that was what was working in the back of my mind when I set up this 19-week Boston Marathon training regimen, that sure enough I’d do something stupid, hard-run with Thurb in the cold, pouring rain without limbering up, tense in my body over the first quarter-mile, because during that part of the run all pretense of me being in charge of Thurber is cast off, as he howls and howls and charges off like a wild horse, me holding on to the leash for dear life, and on this day (Dec. 7), as I’m yanked along, big heavy strides, about a dozen of them, before I feel something like needles digging just below the surface, upper outside thigh of my left leg, where the hamstring attaches, first thinking what the hell else do I have in my pocket besides the Snoop Loop halter and retractable nylon leash, what could be causing this sharp pain, but then I think shit, it’s a muscle tear, hard to know just how serious, but something not good, and I’m thinking that if I stop now in the cold and wet and walk home it will only seize up and get worse, if only I’d warmed up before this wouldn’t be happening now, I’m only in a T-shirt and baggy shorts, freezing, the rain really coming down, and damn, Thurb isn’t easing up one bit, this might not be such a good idea, trying to slow him down so that the pain is just a dull throb, eventually though he does as he always does, levels off into a trot, stops the incessant howling so that I too can relax, feel looser, which helps, and, yeah, keep going, convincing myself that if I get home in time before I have to gather up my stuff and head off to the newsroom that I’ll find the heating pad and apply some HIGH heat before my sedentary day gets in full swing, and worst case, ties up the muscle so badly that I’ll be taking a week of rest days, heat and cold and light stretching before I’ll be able to get back to training for the marathon; maybe I’ll be looking at a 100-day marathon training regimen after all.
Ha! And here I was looking to write something wise and enduring about how to strike a balance in a busy life. Fat chance. (Better just to quote from the recently published second volume of Beckett’s letters: “Never seen so many butterflies in such worm-state, this little central cylinder, the only flesh, is the worm. First flights of young swallows, parents who feed them on the wing.”)
Wednesday (Dec. 7) is a miserable rainy day, start my office workday at 3 p.m. and finish at 11 p.m. Before that I’d planned to take the dog to the dogrun and then do some writing on a nonfiction proposal, see a friend for lunch before my workday begins. On Monday night (Dec. 5), M and I came home after full days in our mutual non-domestic offices to find our living room furniture – well, two comfy chairs – destroyed. It appears that Thurber had gone on a rampage. Feathers were literally floating in air. Dead tired and vacuuming feathers like picking up grains of sand on the beach.
So I’ll take a break from running and hard cross-training through the weekend at least. On Thursday (Dec. 8) it seems clear to me that it’s mild, the injury. A pull or tear in the thigh muscle itself, not the hamstring. There’s swelling, and if I were at home I’d treat it with heat and cold. Failing that though, through the weekend I’ll take anti-inflammatories to keep the swelling down. And stretching. Simple stuff, yoga-like, because as M rightly points out, my muscles are hard, too hard. Wednesday’s run in the rain could’ve been a lot worse, in terms of injury. I got off easy and now I just have to be smart.
How do you strike that balance? For years – and I’ve been running long distance on a regular basis for going on 37 of them – I just went out the door and ran. Didn’t think about nutrition or stretching or cross training. None of that stuff. I’ve got a lot to learn in terms of striking the right balance so that I can run for the rest of my life; never quite like I could in sheer defiance of my body's needs when I was 25 or 35 or even 45, but I’m convinced if I make the right choices – diet and a balance of strengthening, stretching and various speeds and types of running – that I can not only continue to run long distance but to do so as The Runner’s Body says in its subtitle, stronger, longer, and faster .¤.¤.
I don’t know when I will get back to full marathon training. But I know one thing. Until April, I’m thinking I should let Thurber run with the dogs. Or the next time I go out with him and he goes dashing off so that I’m stuck with either blowing out a muscle or letting go of the leash, I’ll let go of the leash.
Next: Running for Your Life: December Highs
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