Thursday, January 18, 2007

Was Fun While It Lasted

Seventeen seconds after I crossed the finish line at the St. George marathon, I made a personal vow that “I’m never doing something this stupid ever again.” Sort of. Mostly after I crossed the line, I was weepy and limping and exhausted and muttering that gatorade was “Devil water” and why are there so many stupid stairs to walk down in this park?

I get a little loopy at the end of long runs. Plus after you run 26.2 miles, your quadriceps hurt like fire and walking down a flight of stairs is difficult beyond belief.

I also decided that I was going to take a break from running and training. I knew I’d pick it up again, but I was done for a while. Also, I was interested in eating “real food” again, i.e., cheese and ice cream (with that paraffin-esque Magic Shell™ on top, yummy!) for breakfast, lunch, mid afternoon snacking and supper. I went running maybe once in October after the marathon and since then I’ve sat in our large living room chair and watched re-runs of House, Dr. Who and Mythbusters with the kids and could feel myself ballooning as time passed.

It was glorious.

Seriously, I gained about fifteen to twenty pounds. In three months. Probably took a few years off my life and it’s a “bad thing” to yo-yo like that, but I’ll be old when that happens, so it’s worth it, right?

Anyway, I started running again last week. Inside on the stupid treadmill, since it is bitterly cold out.

When I first started running I loved running on treadmills. I was terrible at pacing myself and having a machine do that for me was perfect. Nice and steady and easy on the knees as well. But I grew to dislike it. It’s not because it is boring, though it is. It’s ‘cause I lost the remote control to the DVD player I have down there and I can’t watch anything good. :-]

OK, all of that to say this:

It’s not that bad, picking up running again. Not at all as hard as I thought it would be. I’m taking it easy and not really pushing myself, but I’m pleasantly surprised at how easy it has been to slip back into the groove of running.

Though I’m going to miss cheese. And ice cream. And the chair! What will the chair do without me?! How will it carry on? Who is going to loaf about in the chair?!

Probably Lucas.

1. I haven’t ridden my bike for a while and I’m absolutely dreading the first couple of rides, which are sure to be filled with slow riding, sweat and pain followed by pain and stiffness after I get off my bike.

   Posted by michael  on  01/20/07  at  01:08 AM

2. Best advice I ever received for re-starting: don’t do so much at a time that you won’t want to do it again. 

   Although it’s hard to only run 3 miles when you know that just a couple months ago you could set aside a morning and do 18.  Good luck.

   Posted by braine  on  01/24/07  at  09:07 AM

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