All play and no work makes mounting a comeback that much harder.
This isn’t going to be easy. I’ve long resisted suggestions from friends and family that I “cut back” on my races. I’ve always been worried that if I did, I’d find it easier and easier to just “not run” and harder and harder to maintain the fitness level that near constant marathoning has afforded me.
And now I know the truth.
It’s really, really ridiculously hard to get back into it once you’ve taken a break. I took two weeks off, planning to take three. But when I saw my doctor about lethargy and dizziness and various maladies that I couldn’t shake, she ran through a list of things and then I mentioned I had stopped running because of my bruised ribs. She told me I should have led with that because I’m clearly endorphin deficient, going from high mileage to cold turkey, and that THAT is probably the greatest cause for my imbalances.
So I started running late last week. And it was incredibly hard to get out the door. And even harder to maintain any kind of pace that I had known before.
It’s going to be a long road back to fighting form, to running times, to really much of anything.
Going forward then there’s going to be a fair bit of “shoulder to the wheel” blogging, as this becomes the story of a comeback sown in the fields of hard work.
And because I rarely if ever do anything in moderation, it all begins with the Chili Pepper Series in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
On my marks….
Get set….