Running out to meet the day

Today, I feel like I am back. 

I woke up really early, just as the sun was rising and my first thought was that I wanted to run so I laced up my shoes and hit the road. I felt strong and the running came easily.

Something dramatic has shifted in me over the past few weeks. I feel so much stronger now—not the stronger that you get from working out consistently but the stronger that is the opposite of depletion, a sense that I have a foundation now, that my energy reserves are beginning to fill up again.

Lyme Disease is long and difficult to understand. I never really looked sick, except to the people who knew me well and were monitoring my health, that is to say, to my mother and yet, at the worst of it, I often didn’t have the energy to climb up the stairs and would pass out on the couch before making it to bed. Being this tired and sick made me feel two dimensional, dried out and brittle. Last year was the first year that I could really invest in my life, but I couldn’t withstand any stress, any change to my schedule or fight off any cold. I still felt like a light breeze could shred and scatter me so I have been keeping really tight reigns on my life, hardly going out or venturing off the strict and narrow lifestyle I know that I can support. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, I feel strong and solid and supple. Vibrant.

It is pretty incredible.

I’m not planning my runs or workouts right now, just doing something when I am inspired to so I am not running far--I ran 3 miles this morning, and walked another mile but it felt good. was the early morning and so beautiful in the park.

My ITBand has been acting up lately but I learned another piece of the puzzle: when I land on my left foot, I feel my left hamstring and glute strongly engage to support my landing but when I land on my right foot, only my quad fires. It’s a really unsupported landing. And then my it band starts getting really tight. My current theory is that I need to get my thigh and hip muscles to all work together so that my TFL and glute med don’t have to do more than their share of the work, get really tight and then yank on the ITB. I am working with Matt, the MAT practitioner again this Friday and I am really curious to hear what he has to say about it all. I will definitely update!