Gut it Out

I ran in my first race this morning since the 10k I ran back in June and boy oh boy, do I feel it. I'm not exactly sure how I got that out of shape in such a short amount of time, but apparently it's possible. It was at the 5k marker where I felt like I was dragging my right leg behind me like a freshly-killed deer carcass and when I hit the 10k signage I was a solid 3 minutes behind schedule. At that point my eyes started darting around in search of an escape route but I must have slipped into a delusional running-coma because I kept going.

My massage therapist Brent and I were chatting about how it actually helps to keep moving in a race if we can sort-of "go to sleep" while we run. It sounds absurd, but there's this mindset that we can have where we relax the face and shoulders and then let our eyelids droop in a catatonic state of moving meditation. The heart rate decreases and we kinda just shuffle along while we preserve the pathetic remnants of our energy for the last bit of the race. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we get rudely awakened by an emergent stomach burbling or a hamstring pull. I guess it worked for me today in that I stayed in that race, but there's only so many tricks the mind can pull on the body. With 5k left, my body gave my mind the middle finger.

I hate over-killing the parallels between running and life but don't we all have those moments where we realize we slipped into a life-coma? When all we can do is hang in there until we can pass through that stage and finish it already and yet with every footfall we anxiously anticipate the impending doom of the emotional equivalent of diarrhea cramps? It's not pretty, but sometimes it's all we can do, and that's okay. This does pass, it will end, and if we need an ambulance to get us there quicker then so be it. I just hope they have nitrous oxide hooked up in the back by the stretcher.