The Downside of Running

The past few weekends I’ve done some fast hill running in my immediate neighborhood.  Generally I’ll do 2 laps that are about .6 miles each, then a longer lap of around a mile to finish up.  It’s funny because while longer, slower runs tend to be easy for me, shorter runs with hill work (maybe because I push myself until I’m in pain?) are taking their toll.  

First off, there’s that lovely lung/mucus/coughy thing that happens to me sometimes.  That in itself is reason enough to stick to indoor exercise.  Twenty minutes after I got home from my run this morning, amid continuous hacking, Ted was asking if I’d contracted swine flu.

Secondly is the crazy state my metabolism goes into after running.  After my run I immediately ate a lunch consisting of whole wheat pasta with veggie ’sausage,’ baby carrots, and some deviled eggs, followed by a couple Petit Ecolier chocolate cookies.  A few hours later I was ready for some afternoon pancakes.  I honestly doubt that during my run I burned the equivalent of the one billion or so calories I felt impelled to consume this afternoon, but I sure felt hungry enough to do so.

Lastly, there’s something about hard running that can make me fatigued for the rest of the day, and can sometimes give me headaches.  I’ve got both the fatigue and the headache going on right now, despite the emergency medicinal Diet Coke I consumed about an hour ago.  Hopefully this truly is just a result of running too hard, and not swine flu (or hog cholera)!

The First Run

The first run after a hiatus from running can be punishing or elating, depending on the kind of shape you’re in.  When I returned from my college semester in Ghana, I’d been excercising a LOT (as in dancing barefoot in the tropical heat for 4-5 hours a day), but I’d also been eating Redred nearly everyday, which is delicious fried ripe plantains and blackeyed peas drowning in palm oil, and looks like this:

Droooool

I’d been wearing adjustable wrap skirts the whole time I was there, so it was a shock to my system when I came home and found that none of my jeans fit.  When I tried to go for a run, I felt like I was wading through wet concrete carrying a backpack full of books.  The combination of gaining ten or fifteen pounds and not having run for four months (aside from a few sorry attempts through dirt roads in the jungle) made getting back into running shape a torturous affair.

Until last Sunday, I hadn’t been on a real run in over a month.  I’d cross country skiied in Montana, and biked twenty miles in Panama, but I hadn’t hit the pavement in all that time.  It turns out that in spite of my budding Buddhabelly, I’d been keeping active enough over the past month that running for the first time on Sunday actually felt pretty good.  I was having trouble motivating, so I decided to combine my jog with errands, which for some reason, I never have trouble motivating to do.

I got a ziploc, put some essentials like money and keys in there, and saftey-pinned it into my pocket, and took off for the ATM, about half a mile downhill from my house.  I was feeling pretty good, so I decided to jog another half mile up Grand, by the lake.  I stopped at a post office box and mailed some letters I was carrying with me – a photo collage for my grandma and a check to my dad, who’d graciously wired me money during my time of need in Panama.

I was feeling so light and bouncy and fast and free that I decided to run to the top of a hill, then begin to turn it around, so as not to overdo it.  I bounded back down Lakeshore and stopped in at a Walgreen’s, where I bought a few lightweight items I’d been needing, then headed home.  

It was one of those runs where, even though I’d gone two or three miles, I felt like I had cheated somehow because it was so easy and I was barely out of breath or noticing the strain in my muscles.  I felt like I could go out and do it all over again…

I’m glad I didn’t, because I woke up the next day sore EVERYWHERE.  Including my abs and my arms.  Determined not to let the soreness stop me, I decided to go out for another jog/errands combo today.  I ran around my neighborhood, then down to Trader Joe’s to pick up some groceries (then walk back home).  It was… arduous, to say the least.  I think I went about three-quarters of a mile before I wanted to turn around.  EPIC RUN FAIL.

The lesson is one I’ve learned a dozen times: it is really, really easy to get out of running shape.  It only takes a week or two.  Maybe next time I go on vacation (i.e. in 2015), I’ll try to sneak in at least one jog.

Progress

(Insert Obama quip here). I’m unofficially in my 4th week of 10k Training Light (TM). I ran three miles on Tuesday on a treadmill, at speeds which recently seemed punishing (6.8 on the treadmill, or about 8:50 miles). In my peak condition, I could run three miles at about a seven-minute mile pace, so this achievement on Tuesday isn’t a like a personal record or anything, but rather a sign that I’m slowly but surely becoming more like the fit version of myself.

More than the omnipresent Fear of Becoming Fat (FOBF – that great, terrifying motivator which somehow becomes more pervasive after getting married), I am motivated by becoming faster (that’s where the treadmill pedometer comes in handy) as well stronger. I think getting strong is a good goal for any woman, above becoming fast or losing weight. Getting stronger is a great feeling – my leg and arm muscles are noticeably more defined, and I reap the rewards of the work I’ve put into them as I stride up the hills and staircases in my neighborhood. In my fantasies, being strong also means I’m more ready to fight off any bad guys out there that might want to mess with me – and living in the crime capital of the Bay Area, this is a real possibility.

On a deeper level, kicking ass on a physical level helps other areas of my life – in particular my mental and emotional fortitude. I trained and completed a marathon at a very emotionally painful time in my life, and I think it was the running that helped me get through it. When you set out physical goals and allow yourself to achieve them, you begin to see how you can also kick ass in other areas of your life.