Reset
Decks cleared, it’s time for a do-over
Last year was nearly a total bust for my running ambitions. Which can mean only one thing:
It’s time to run it back.
When we last left my fitness regime, I had trashed the back side of my left leg by stepping on the loose ends of my lock laces during a September trail run (note to everyone’s self: tuck in those loose ends!). And, even as my hamstrings and other and sundry tissues on that kinetic chain healed (ever so slowly), I was then diagnosed with an inguinal hernia that needed surgery. Which finally happened last month.
Healing from that surgery has taken longer than expected — like most people, I noted only the more optimistic end of my surgeon’s recovery range, so I felt not just impatient but in fact quite salty when it took until nearly the long end to move without feeling anything where he sliced me open.
But now that my recovery is complete (knocking on wood) I have a more-or-less open field to regaining my fitness and testing it at the marathon distance. Which is good, because I signed up to run the California International Marathon on December 8. (I might have felt a little peer pressure since my friends Matt and Dean are running it as well.) And that means it’s time to get back to the daily grind of training.
I say more-or-less open field because there are a few life events that will happen between now and December 8. First, Kim and I will be formalizing our relationship with a domestic partnership in September. There will be parties and family celebrations. And then Kim and I will be taking our first international trip together in October. We’ll be visiting Greece, the first time for us both, so I imagine workouts — especially long runs — will be hard to come by.
I’ll also continue to travel between the Bay Area and Montana, and that travel seems to disrupt my fitness routine too. Each of those locations hold their own challenges. In Montana I train alone, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past twenty years it’s that I am far more likely to complete a workout when I’m sharing it with someone else. In the Bay Area, I have several people with whom I can train — the issue is that we aren’t pace-compatible. I am either significantly faster or quite a bit slower than the people I run with regularly. So while I am more likely to complete my workout in California, I am more likely to hit my target paces when I’m in Montana.
First-world problems, I know, but obstacles nonetheless.
Still, a successful summer and fall — and success will mean finishing CIM with something approximating a running gait rather than the hobbling walk-of-shame I endured the last time I ran it — will launch me into what I hope will be a more ambitious — and undoubtedly incandescent — 2025.
Rumor is that next year may mark the last time that the current incarnation of the AIDSLifeCycle ride goes from San Francisco to Los Angeles — which would be a shame — and that seems like a good reason to reprise it. My hometown of Rockford, Illinois will be hosting its inaugural Ironman 70.3, and since next year is a milestone birthday for me (even if I got an early jump on the retirement thing) it also means I move up into a new age group, which seems like the ideal time to go for an Ironman triathlon again. Portugal has intrigued me for years, and there happens to be a full Ironman in Cascais in October. Kim is definitely on board for another international trip about then too. And the Missoula Marathon has proven to be such a hit with the Diablo Harriers that the odds are better than even that we’ll again have a crowd to run the three races over three days next June.
But first I need to drop about ten pounds. And get back some aerobic capacity. And firm up my core and upper body too. Oh, and get out for those four runs every week. All to get to the suck that is the last few miles of every marathon.
I guess that’s why they call it the grind.
