I’ve taken some “me” time. Which is insane because it’s almost always “me” time. I mean, this is a website all about me. So who am I to be saying, “ya know what? I’m a little tired of “me”… I’m going to take a break from “me” and maybe spend some time with “me.” That’s I think one of those definitions of insanity, like banging your head against a wall or trying to go to Disney World during Easter.
I spent part of the past few weeks licking the proverbial wounds and dealing with the ravages of time, mileage, and foolishness. Opting against a rage, rage of verbiage on the website, a wallow here and there, I spent time writing false letters to friends long lost, ex loves, and the person at 1601 Pennsylvania Avenue asking about the neighbors. Those files, that prose, were ravings that should not be seen and so, as I have often done in the past with such things, they have been crumpled and tossed aside. Did it help? Well….
While I’ve rehabilitated some of my aches and pains in the last few weeks, the ball of my foot remains… troublesome. Persnickity. Like a giant rock is just under my foot at all times, a glob of hardened cement. I know I’ve written loads about this in my rambling way but since it’s still an issue, I figure I’ll do a bit of online sleuthing to see what’s what.
I think it might be a bursitis… a phrase I’ve heard but don’t really know what it means. Like the difference between a calzone and a stromboli or what is “happiness” really. A quick google search on a bursitis treatment recommends the usual RICE – rest, ice, compression, elevation – and in one instance of how to treat the situation when one is “an athlete.” I’m not so sure I can rightly call myself an athlete, but my exercise of choice is running… which makes this bullet point a real roller coaster corkscrew:
In any case, I’ve been trying to get back out there and run. As I’ve posted over the last few days, I’m headed to the land down under to try and run the Outback Marathon… again but for the first time. I’m struggling with putting together an 8 mile run which is, for you math nuts, less than a third of a marathon… which means if I’m tired after 8 miles, how am I going to handle another 18 thereafter?
It’s been hot and humid here in Florida, with temperatures hovering around mid-90s and the heat index often creeping into the triple digits. My headphones, the free ones they give me on international flights or charge $2 for on domestics, short circuited out thanks to the rivers of water that cascading out of me on a run. So I decided to go without music for a few weeks of training.
I usually train with my iPod on my daily runs but then go without music for actual races. I like to hear the world around me on the 26.2 miles but find as I run the same old, same old training routes that the music helps drown out the people-y world, the cars, the noise of life.
And thus while I went sans-music of late on my out and back morning runs, I was reminded that there is no such thing as the sound of silence when running. There is the whooshing Doppler Effect of cars speeding down the road (and I do mean speeding – it’s supposed to be 45 mph on the main road I run yet there are times it seems like drivers feel they’re on the autobahn or auditioning for the latest Vin Diesel movie). There’s chirping of birds, the frantic footfalls of rabid squirrels, the rustle of trees in the wind… though recently there hasn’t been much wind – the humidity just hangs there, as if the air was more a gelatinous mold and I were a piece of fruit trapped in a viscous nightmare.
And then there’s the weirdly unsteady footfalls. I can tell my gait is off, not only because there are times when the ball of my foot questions every life decision that brought me to this point of asking it to do something. But the sound of each thud as I pound the pavement is off-key, off tempo. The music of the run is wrong, as if a 45 single was played at 33 rpm.
What this means for Australia, I can only guess.