3 Weeks and a Day

It’s been 3 weeks and a day since the last time I’ve run. In that time a couple of things have happened to me. The good news is that my legs no longer hurt as much. It is no longer excruciatingly painful to walk down a flight of stairs and I can walk without feeling like I am hobbling along. On the negative side, I’ve become morbidly depressed. It’s not depression over not being able to run; it is more the fact that running for me somehow kept my depression from hitting me so hard. There is a simple ease in running and the longer I ran the better I felt. I could lose myself in running and all my pressures and worries just seemed to disappear. Having that taken away from me was like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Yes I can go bike riding or swimming, but they are just not giving me the same pleasure that running gave me. I feel good after I get in a swim or a bike, but the effort that goes into doing those activities just seems to be too much for me at times. All I had to do for running was slap on a pair of sneakers and go. My mind could wander aimlessly as the miles passed by and I didn’t have to think of anything more complicated other than what my next turn should be. Swimming and biking take a higher level of concentration and doesn’t give me that Zen feeling. When I get on my bike or go to the pool, I am forcing myself to do so. It is not something I want to do. I don’t know what this means. My nickname of Beast came from the days that I would be up at 4am every morning to do mega workouts. I’d do this right through the dead of winter when not another living soul would dare to go outside. I am so far away from that person right now and that makes me sad. I wish I could recapture it. My inner Beast has escaped leaving me a shell of who I once was. I’ve written about this before how in the past I would be heavily into training, but after a while I would burn out and return to slovenly ways. Normally a training cycle would last about 3 years. I’ve been going since June 18, 2001 and have made a very good run of it this time. I have no desire to return to being a fat bastard that is completely out of shape. I am not getting younger and it gets harder and harder to whip a body into shape. I know this in my heart and I feel much stress and pressure for me to continue to keep myself in shape. I need a catalyst to spark my interest in getting back into shape. The Vermont 100 Mile race was that catalyst for me this year, but that has been taken away by my sudden inability to run. I am supposed to wait 6 – 8 weeks before I begin to run again. It’s going to be hard to maintain some sort of fitness during this time. I’ve been managing to work out around 4 times per week. Hopefully I can continue to do so. Also hopefully, I won’t lose interest in pursuing the Vermont 100 Miler by the time I can run again. It’s happened to me in the past, where I’ve been denied something that I wanted for a long time, but ultimately getting it at a later date. However by the time I got it I no longer cared about it. I hope that’s not the case with the Vermont 100. Last week I was in New Orleans for a company convention. I had big plans to explore the city by running around it. New Orleans is a very beautiful place and as I explored it by trolley and foot, I felt an anger rising inside me that I couldn’t be outside running. I distracted myself from these thoughts by partying and drinking with my colleagues from work as much as possible. I will say I did succeed in distracting myself. I have some pictures to prove it, which I will not post here, lest one of them come back to haunt me in the future. Those who followed my Tweets on Twitter know somewhat what I was doing while in Nawlins and I am going to let that serve as my record of my adventures. I need to find something that is going to give me pleasure in life and make me happy. Or perhaps more accurately, I am going to need to learn how to be happy. I feel like it’s a lost emotion and I don’t know how to find it. There are things that give me pleasure and make me happy (such as my children), but those are at time moment circumstances. It doesn’t stay with me. I am looking for it and just can’t find it. I am a blind man in the desert searching for water. All I seem to be able to find is dust.

Gray Chest Hair

I woke up this morning to find another gray chest hair. I thought I eliminated this problem a couple of months ago when I first discovered one of those bad boys and plucked it off my chest. It was much to my dismay this morning that I found another. I mean, how does this happen? It wasn’t there yesterday. Did a 1 inch strand of hair suddenly sprout out of my chest overnight? Did something happen to this hair follicle that caused it to suddenly turn gray? I haven’t been under any particular stress for such a dramatic event to occur so the whole thing is deeply puzzling. It’s enough to make me want to start shaving my chest again. So anyway, I was discussing my gray hair with some friends over twitter, which led to the inevitable discussion over age. I started to ask if my friend Darkgracie understood why time seems to pass faster as we get older. She feels that it is a state of mind. That as we get older we are busier so perhaps don’t notice how fast time is passing by us. No doubt that this possibility is a contributing factor. However, what I truly believe causes this phenomena of the years passing by faster has to do with fractions. You see, as we get older, each year becomes a smaller fraction of our lives. A year in the life of a 40 year old is not as significant as a year in the life of an 8 year old. To an 8 year old, 1 year represents a relatively large portion of his life; whereas to a 40 year old it’s a much smaller fraction. The interval of time we are measuring is the same, but as a total portion of one’s life, it becomes less significant as the years go on. A 1 year interval to a child seems to be a huge amount of time, that’s because proportionally to their lives it is a large amount of time. As we age, each year is in proportion smaller amounts of your entire life which in turn makes the time seem to go faster. A 40 year old may have trouble remember which year something happened in since they tend to blend together after a while. One year ago for an 8 year old would seem like a very long time ago. At 40, you need to have many years pass before it seems like a long time ago. You can read other people’s theories about why this phenomenon occurs here. In a way I am glad I am doing the Vermont 100 miler instead of Ironman Lake Placid this year, just for the change of pace. As you start doing the same race over and over again, one year just begins to bleed into the next year. I was discussing this with my friend Larry who has streaked to 25 consecutive New York City Marathons. I asked him if he can remember something specific from each of the Marathons. He didn’t think he could; they all become the same after a while. Sure there were a few marathons at which he could remember specific things, but overall they all became the same. It begins to become like it was just yesterday when you were doing the previous year’s marathon. You are doing the same thing year after year only the number on the calendar has changed. I guess you can also think of it as life starts to become easier as you gain more experience. When you were a young child it would take you a while to read through a book when you were first starting to learn to read. As you get older and got more practice at reading, the pages would turn ever faster and faster. It is easier to pass the time as you get more experienced with age. It just slips by. Well, that is enough philosophy for one day. It is time for me to get out and do a run. I can’t miss days. Yes, one day in and of itself is insignificant, but they add up. July 19th will be here very soon. Before I know it, my first Vermont 100 Miler will have been several years ago. I know that too soon, I will be looking back at this event rather than looking forward to it. I want to look back at it knowing I made a good showing. In order to be able to have that piece of mind, I need to put in the work now while I still have the time. The day will be here soon enough.