running distractions

I woke up this morning as the sun was rising and my first thought was, I need to go run at the beach! A half hour later, there I was, decked out in wool hat, leggings and warm jacket. The morning was white. Seriously. The fog was so thick this morning, I could only see about ten feet around me. It dulled the sound of the ocean and I felt insulated. Quiet. 

I love mornings like this. I love running into the fog and feeling so alone. Just me and the beach and running.

And yet. It's been months since I woke up and the first thing I wanted to do was to run. Part of it was injury but a lot of it was joining a running club and setting training goals for myself. All of a sudden, I was quantifying my running.

When I first ran competitively, in high school, I didn't really care about my stats.  I was running track mainly to get faster for my soccer game. Kinda like some students took Latin in high school so that they'd score better on their SATs. That was me and soccer. Just trying to get faster, quicker, better.
I kept running after high school, but for general fitness. I ran in the Berkeley and Oakland hills in college and then afterwards, ran around Central Park, using my runs as an escape from my urban life. I ran when I was diagnosed with Lyme's Disease and still ran, that first year that I lived with my parents, even though my life had become a merry-go-round of doctor's visits and utter illness. I ran simply because I was in denial that I was sick, that I should rest, that I could no longer do this thing that I'd let come to define me.

Only after a year of treatment, with my memory still shot and my mind still groggy and out of focus, did I stop running. My Lyme specialist told me that every time I did cardio, I opened the blood-brain barrier and let more of the Lyme bacteria move into my brain. That was enough to set me straight: I could deal with the pain and the fatigue of Lyme, but I hated feeling disoriented and unable to understand the world around me.

I started taking long walks in that time and never even considered lacing on my running shoes. Five year later, I started running again on a lark. I felt wobbly and silly and it was hard! Mostly because I live on a hill and run out the door and up a hill for a good mile and then it loops around and down and flattens out and then I run back up for another mile or so to get home. Such is the nature of living in San Francisco though.

When I started, I'd have to stop and walk frequently. I didn't really mind it and either began running when I was ready to again or walked the rest of the way home. For the rest of that year, I put on my running shoes often and soon ran much faster and further than when I began (obviously), but I never judged myself if I had to walk the whole way. Or cut my run short. Or run further and easier than I had planned. I just loved everything about being outside, in motion, and enjoyed watching the pink sunset light up the houses on San Bruno and the the fog rolling in from the ocean. I liked looking at the houses I ran by and thinking about who made the wooden planes and hung them from a tree or crammed three fountains into an entryway the size of a shoebox or what the view must be like from the house on stilts on the side of the hill. I checked out my neighbor's poppy garden (so friggin' beautiful) and watched another neighbor's squash vines slowly work their way along the sidewalk, the flowers shriveling and the squash filling out.

I ran or walked to simply be present, to take note of the world around me, to move. It was the one part of my life where I was easy with myself, utterly without judgement and completely present with the state of my body. I ran when I was able to, slowed when I needed, walked often and would take days off when my body clamored for rest.

And then I joined a running club. Which I loved for the companionship and the other runners' knowledge and experience . But I also immediately made a running schedule: Monday, Wednesday and Saturdays were my running days. And I now had to commit one of them to a long run and I needed to keep track of that run and know how far and how fast I went so that I could increase it according to a schedule.

I started evaluating my runs and forcing myself to complete them according to schedule. I burned out. Running wasn't fun anymore, it had become another place in my life where I needed to perform to certain standards. Along the way, my ITB's knotted up as did my peroneals and posterior tibs.

Now that I had a running schedule, I stopped listening to my body and pushed it to complete the scheduled runs (silly, I know). To keep out there, I started getting weekly massages and shifted the focus of my monthly acupuncture sessions to my legs. Until finally, I stopped.

After months of running rest, today is the first day I woke up with running on my mind as this thing that I get to do.

This morning I ran a couple of miles north. They felt good. The fog lifted by the time I reached the north end of the park. The shoreline was packed with runners and walkers and birds. I watched some seagulls rip apart a crab and a paddle boarder moving out to sea. I took off my shoes and waded in the water and then started walking south again. I waded in until my knees were covered and walked back to my car, wishing I was wearing a suit to swim. I saw the sun break through the fog and checked to see what the fishermen had caught.

I was out on the beach for nearly two hours and only ran for the first thirty minutes of it but I had such a wonderful morning and know that I'll be waking up again soon to head out on a run.