pain is weakness leaving the body

So I started running.

I know.  It’s weird for me too.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I wonder if I’m doing it even slightly to spite a former friend who asked me what I’d do here besides research, you know, to stay sane, and I jokingly replied “I’ll take up running.  It seems to be the thing that everyone in New Haven does.”

Her response was something along the lines of “Honestly I can’t see you running, ever.”

Well, so there.

Okay, mainly I’m doing it for a couple of reasons.  The first is that I have sort of always wanted to do it, because it seemed like a low-maintenance thing that has highly exhorted benefits.  More on that first half in a minute.  The second is that I (and my considerably heavier body) was halfway shamed into it by my eager little (but not littlest) brother when we went out to lunch at Chipotle.

Yes, I picked the venue.

I’ve only been running for two days, but so far it feels very reasonable (with a couple of exceptions) and is far less earth-shattering and agonizing than that one mile a year that they made us run all through grade school.

When I think about the mile, I have horrid memories of stitches, of that coppery blood taste in my mouth, and especially of shame when I walked for long stretches.  The best I ever managed was 8:47, in ninth grade, and from then on out I slowly slid away from it.  Recreational sports leagues didn’t take older kids – didn’t I know it was a feedstock for the JV and varsity teams? – and I wasn’t interested in the time investment that afterschool sports required.

My metabolism, frankly, is a champ.  Let’s face it.  I have absolutely zero excuse for looking as good as I do.  And I don’t even mean that in a particularly boastful way.

So I got here, to graduate school, and I was living on my own, cooking for myself, managing my own time (sometimes well, sometimes poorly).  Funny how things got worse when I had more time: the less time I had, the more I planned ahead.  I also never made it to an ATM so I didn’t eat lunch from the carts (I’m perennially guilty of this now.  I can’t help it.  The food is delicious).

Anyway this isn’t meant to be a treatise on my life and dietary habits.  Suffice to say that I spent my free time goofing around, reading, or baking.  I love baking.  I think it’s incredibly therapeutic – and it usually doesn’t give me the same I’m-going-to-die-push-through-the-pain feeling as running does – but it’s also hard on my waistline.  Or, more aptly stated, my love handles.  What?!  What’s the use in baking if you’re not going to taste as you go?  I’m not in the business of making PRETTY cookies.  They should just be addicting.

So when I was home and DJ talked me into running, I thought about it, and then I tagged along with Laura to TJ Maxx and spent $50 on running pants and other sundry items that I needed (for up top... shhh!).  Now that I’d made a moderate investment in the venture, I was pretty much set.  I’d been poking around on the internet and had seen a link that someone had posted on facebook.  It directed me to a regiment for beginning runners, called Couch-to-5K, and was supposed to work in 9 weeks.

Okay, I thought.  Maybe I could do 9 weeks.  After all, the first week is only a minute of jogging alternated with 90 seconds of walking, and I only have to do that for 20 minutes.  That’s 8 minutes of running AND I get to walk.  Seems fair.

So I got back to New Haven, I set some alarms and tucked myself into bed around 11:40 pm.  When they went off at 6:55 am, I hauled myself out of bed, half excited and half nervous.  I put on half of my ensemble and stretched (poorly) for 15 minutes, then slipped into my sweatshirt and sneakers, grabbed my cheap mp3 player and my keys, and headed out.

I didn’t have headphones (besides the Bose pair that my parents bought me one Christmas and believe me when I say that those are not ever going to be worn outside), so I just used the mp3 player as a timer.  I didn’t want to carry my phone around outside.  I was trying to be careful about muggings.  I decided I didn’t want to run on Prospect because I wanted to minimize my contact with human beings, so I walked down the hill in my backyard to St. Ronan and ran along there; 10 minutes in one direction, 10 minutes back.

It wasn’t long before I was very tired and very hurting, but as I’d told myself many times, this wasn’t going to be easy and it probably wasn’t going to be very fun in the moment.  I finished around 7:45-7:50, hauled myself back up the hill (hating myself more with every step of those little staircases) and into my apartment, poured my coffee from the coffeemaker into a mug to cool to drinking temperature, and stretched again for a few minutes before dragging myself into the shower.

Which was cold.  Apparently everyone showers at 8:00 am in my building.  This is why I like night showers.  I get some warm water.

Anyway, I sudsed up my poor hair (I’m also trying to get to a three-four day split with hair-washing: either Monday to Thursday and Friday to Sunday or Sunday to Wednesday and Thursday to Saturday, but sometimes hair isn’t interested in cooperating so it’s pretty fluid right now and I don’t worry about whether or not it’s a “hair-washing” night but instead I just examine it in the mirror and think about how tired I am and really, I could get away with it just this once; this is maybe not especially compatible with running MWF mornings...) and proceeded with my shower while my cell phone alarm went off and sang me Kaleidoscope Heart about eight times.  I figured if I somehow slept through Working for the Weekend’s obscenely loud opening bars, I may as well still be up in time for class, so I left the 8:00 am alarm activated.

I felt really nauseous.  It was interesting because mostly my muscles just felt fatigued, which was why I had so much trouble with the stairs on my way up the hill.  I hadn’t had stomach aches or a stitch, but for some reason the idea of eggs and water did not appeal to me.

I had eggs and I drank water.  I also had some strawberry flavored kefir and the aforementioned coffee.  Still felt sick, but dumped food into my stomach anyway.  The rest of the day I felt very awake, but the muscle aches set in quickly.

I have them almost everywhere, really, but for some reason it’s worst in my left ankle.  I don’t worry too much about it.  It isn’t prohibitive and I’m not limping, but it’s uncomfortable.  I took a bath last night to soak it, and that felt good.

Last night I went to DSW and picked up a pair of running shoes, grey and baby blue, for $60, and then I went to Walmart and grabbed a cheap pair of earbuds, one of those earband things to keep my ears warm when it gets cold, and (of course) eggs, because I didn’t have time to grocery shop when I got back from home after Thanksgiving break.  I also bought a Best of the 80s compilation album for $7 that came in a collector’s edition (read: completely impractical) metal box.  I can’t remember what it was on that CD that sold me, but there was a particular track that I wanted.

So I went running this morning with my earbuds and my earband and my new shoes and I didn’t have much muscle pain but about 5 minutes in I recognized that the new shoes with ankle socks was going to be a problem.  I pushed through the pain (which was worse when I walked, so running was easier, in a way, and it also dulled the other pains) and hauled myself back upstairs.

Slight miscalculation, maybe, as I'd painted the heels of my socks red.  Ah, life’s little lessons.  I showered (ouch), neosporin’d and bandaided my ankles, and put on bobby socks to wear with my usual sneakers.  It has done the trick reasonably well.  I’m not in any blinding pain and these bandaids ought to be sufficient for when I run again, which means another trip to Walmart. 

I feel very awake when I run, which is nice.  I’m typically a night owl, which means I’m losing some of my time at night but really not much productive time or time in general if I go to bed between 11:30 and midnight.  The soreness is painful but I’m kind of proud of it.  I’m nervous about next week which is 90 seconds of running with 2 minutes of walking.  Which divides out wrong, but I guess I’ll do six repeats and clock in a little bit above 20 minutes.

Besides, with the 8 minutes of running I might be approaching a mile, even if it isn’t all at once.  The best part is that it doesn’t hurt in any prohibitive ways, at least not yet.  And I feel good.  I like the thought that I can still eat the food I love (versus the no sugar diet that I tried in the beginning of the year, which was fantastic in some ways but never would have lasted long-term), but the interesting phenomenon, at least right now, is that I don’t really want to in the same way.  Making the investment in running makes me want to not undo it, so my intake of sugar has been kind of limited which I think is kind of cool.

I occasionally think that I’m not doing enough in terms of exercising, but I have to remind myself that I’m running to my own point of fatigue, that I have to build up endurance first, that I need to not be impatient with myself in this first (second, third, fourth) week.  Everything takes time to get results.

I’m sort of excited about my results.  This is a habit that I can cultivate, maybe, and it’s an easier long term commitment (for me) than giving up sweets. :-)