Wednesday (April 6) makes ten days from The Event, the injury, enough time to reflect on something central: that I’m lucky. What happened to me when a muscle in my right leg spasmed, my upper right hamstring (Torn Hamstrings: don’t you think that makes a great name for a Boomer garage band?), my PT specialist B said it was remarkable that I didn’t, under the circumstances, fall backwards and down the stairs. I had a partial blackout, so I wouldn’t have been able to protect myself at all, I’m on blood thinners, wear a Medic Alert bracelet, I had only four basement stairs to fall down, but I’d be lucky to come out with only one broken leg, my head cracking the hard lino-cement floor and, considering I’m a bleeder –
Instead on April 6 I’m slowly walking up the broken escalator in the subway at 34th Street and Sixth Avenue, and I feel only a slight tug in my leg, much, much better, back to work now at The Post for two full days, but halfway up, I can’t believe it, but I’m feeling winded. Unfit. For the first time in I don’t know how long, and it has been only ten days from TE, progress I’m making, yes, but I can’t imagine I will be suiting up for a run until mid-June at the earliest. What kind of condition will I be in then? How in the world am I going to manage not-running for so long? I’ve been doing it virtually every other day for more than thirty-five years. Yeah, slowness is one thing, and yeah, I will be able to some basic stretches and strengthening, but cardio? Fuhgeddaboudit. Even the stationary bike, at the baby gear; on April 8, I’ve been cane-free for four days, and I’m ten days from what would have been my first Boston Marathon. But that’s done; finished. Funny how I’ve changed, how if I’m true to myself, and finally, finally, listening to my body, which in a eleven short days has slipped from supper to sapped, last Sunday (April 3) struggling to get to the Brooklyn Fifth Avenue farmer’s market every step a wincer, better with the cane but thinking I should go one better, dig M’s crutches out of the basement because with each step with my right leg the pain in my butt, radiating to the knee is killing, what’s ahead for me, thinking, a smile on my face that at this rate – slide-stepping to that early memory of mine, the boy-remembrance of standing over snails moving across our concrete lane from the wet grass (See Running for Your Life: Week Two), amazed by their slow yet determined pace, getting there, but at their pace – I won’t be running until the fall.
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When I was a kid in the summer my father cut my hair. Once a year when the hot weather came and stayed. The do-it-yourself box lid sat open to the words, “If You Can Comb Hair, You Can Cut Hair,” and a 50ish picture of a laughing boy and his smiling pops, the boy’s perfectly coiffed head cropping out of the white cover sheet, the father with his scissors poised above. I imagine they’re talking about a fishing trip coming up, a spin in the convertible, the next day’s pro ball game. “Sit still,” Dad says, breaking the reverie. “That’s not still.” I take a deep breath and direct all my energy to holding my head without moving, as Dad, who never smiles when he’s concentrating on his work., buzzes off all my hair until my head is round and smooth like the red bit atop a matchstick.
Sit still. Hold still. Be still. Today, in my New York life, it seems a pipe dream, but as I listen to my healing body these days, that is what is required. Only so much healing can come through light exercise and strengthening, normal-gait walking, ice and heat compresses. Slowness is one thing, but now I’m shy to even try the exercise bicycle at the lowest possible speed. What I need is the discovery of stillness; to run deep I must cultivate the still waters in me.
Twenty minutes of stillness under a cold compress and I can fairly hear the healing take place. Or I imagine that I do. I sit with a book, David Vann’s “The Legend of a Suicide,” or the poetic wonder of fanciful dream-travel to distant lands, “Atlas of Remote Islands” by Judith Schalansky; M was intuitive and loving in her Brooklyn Public Library find, “The Runner’s Literary Companion,” edited by Garth Battista, twenty minutes hot compress:
“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything
That’s in it.”
– “If” excerpt by Rudyard Kipling
Twenty minutes on the cold compress. Repeat.
Stillness is to keep the mind free as much as to hold your head steady, although it is every bit about that. To not waver in your goal. Stillness is like a curved bridge in a Japanese garden. On each side is the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and yes, my future as a runner. But here, on the bridge, is active resting. Being still. Where I’m going to stay awhile. Watch the Koi swim in the waters beneath my injured yet healing body.
Find that curved bridge in your own life. Pause and reflect. Do what is your equivalent to mine, which is to drink deeply in the still waters of my twin passions: reading and writing. I didn’t know this until I started writing this, but I think I’ve found a path to be still, even in my busy New York life. Pause, but bear down as you proceed beyond slowness to stillness:
“How could he run so long
from death, had not
Apollo for the last time,
the very last, come near
to give him stamina and speed.”
– excerpt from Homer’s Iliad, Robert Fitzgerald, translation
Next: Running for Your Life: Beginner’s Mind
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