I always laugh when runners or non-runners ask me about a particular muscle group. I have no idea what anything is called – my anatomy knowledge topped out with Mrs. Barton’s 5th grade quizzes. The femur is the leg bone that when broken IS rumored to be the gold standard 10 on the pain scale, topping even childbirth. Not having endured either, I cannot say… but whenever I’m injured someplace and I’m asked my pain level I always flash onto that factoid (is it a factoid if it’s just what people say? Perhaps in this not-so-brave new world order).
This already has gone off the rails. My point is post-Monument Valley 50K, the top of my legs hurt. What are those? The thighs? It’s from climbing the mesa and just generally running in dirt and sand and rocks for 30+ miles. But I have been stuffing my face of late, claiming it’s all “recovery” but in truth it was all “gluttony.” Besides, this weekend’s another race and thus I need to train up, taper down, and get back in the groove.
So today was a slowpoke recovery run. I had toyed with the idea of running last night to stretch out the legs post 10.5 hour car ride. But slothful heads and pasta-feedings precluded that plan. I slept terribly, the restless slumber of a car-dragged body combined with the depressive lull following the dissipation of endorphins and adrenaline after a long run. It was a lousy night… but I did watch The Eiger Sanction (1975) which I had never seen; interestingly, there’s a long training sequence in of all places Monument Valley. I knew right where they were driving as I had both driven and run that road 42 years after them.
Again, I digress. The real point (no, really this time) is that I ran a slow 10 miler this morning in this city of broken dreams, a fantasy that some might say is a fake world, one that serves as a monument to the uncanny valley if ever there was one.
