Patience

This morning I've managed to shrink virtually all the important stretching and strengthening exercises I've accumulated over the last 10 months into a concise 20-25 minute program. I felt pretty good with the left side today. My right side still sends signals up to my brain in the form of creepily hushed whispers, "hey... you know this is how your left side used to hurt sometimes... I bet you've got some torn tendons in there that nobody, including yourself, ever thought to look for..." I really try to quell those thoughts. I need to concentrate on one thing at a time, and for now that means my surgical side that should supposedly be fixed.

I did some dynamic stretching, had some extra time and was feeling good so I went out and did 15 minutes worth of run/walking. I did 2 minutes of running with 1 minute of walking. It reminded me of doing the run/walk stuff back in March and how optimistic I was feeling then. Some of the same positive feelings came back to me and I didn't care that I was out walking the streets that I'm so accustomed to running. It was almost like I realized during one of those walking breaks I had hit my proverbial "rock bottom," (or at least some form of it) this past weekend and now there's only better things to come. I felt a renewed patience. This might all be a temporary optimism, but there's no telling at this point. I'm gonna roll with it while it's there. Positivity in my running life is wearing thin these days so I better take what I can.

My greatest wish right now is to be able to get out there and enjoy running again and be pain free. I don't care about the competitive side of it anymore. I considered this for a long time last night and literally thought that I would easily trade not going to the Trials for a 100% healthy body right now. Being able to get outside and run and just have fun with it is all I want right now. Mentally I think I've broken down to the point of not caring about competition as much as getting healthy. Granted, these two things should go hand in hand, one after the other, but I think since the surgery my main focus was getting fast again and rebuilding the ideal notion of myself as a competitive runner. I was chasing the lasting feelings I felt during some of my training runs and races last year and wanted to recreate them too quickly.

I don't care about that anymore. I just want to be able to run. Maybe that's where I should have started months ago.

AH