Blooda!

My first blood blister since returning to running. Popped it. Not sure I should have. Painful. There's a strange sense of pride I'm experiencing along with the pain. I'm feeling like I might actually be "back" to running. Back to the mundane aches and pains of routine runs.

This is a good thing.

At the end of my run today, as I was cooling down a bit, I regained some of my old perspective that running is hard. The other day I read some quote about running that summed it up nicely. Of course now I can't remember the exact quote or even where I read it, but it was something to the effect that the act of running is easy, and that it doesn't take much... no fancy equipment... but that being consistent with running and putting effort into each training run is hard. I'm totally not doing the quote any justice. But I was reminded of that quote today as I pushed through my run. It wasn't a particularly heroic run... not super fast or super long... but I was aware of the effort I was putting forth. And then when it's over, it's over and in another day or two, it'll be like it never happened and I'll be pushing through another run.

It doesn't sound like fun, does it? Funny because this is what I've been craving since being injured back in mid-September.... to be "back" to running... and now that I finally am, I'm remembering that most of the time it is decidedly NOT fun. But I'm still excited to be back!

A fresh start

There's something appealing about beginning anew. Usually one associates such things with the springtime, but why not the fall? I had about forgotten this blog, but a former reader (one of the six or seven) reminded me of it this weekend and now, well, here I am. I'm not sure the timing is so great since my running is practically nonexistent these days. I did something (stress fracture? metatarsalgia?) to my right foot during the second leg of the Reach the Beach relay run in New Hampshire in mid-September. Since then, I've been trying to give it the rest it needs, though the two weeks I spent traipsing all over the cobble-stoned streets of Italy was not exactly rest.

Since returning from Italy two weeks ago, I've attempted to run a handful of times. The first was a disaster. I ran for less than a mile and probably should have ran even less than that as my foot was hurting quite a bit. I waited a week and then tried again with better results - some pain, but less. The difficulty now is keeping ahold of the reins and not jumping right back into running as usual.

I miss it, but I also realize that the nostalgia obscures the realities, the things about it I don't like. But, of course, I'll return... I always do.