A Whole Bunch of Time Off

(10/25/2009 – 11/6/2009)

After barely hanging on to some crappy 20-30 mpw weeks, the wheels finally came off the bus. I got sick, that’s the official line, but that was really all the motivation I needed to go ahead and take a whole bunch of time off. I guess that’s okay, in hindsight. My relationship with running had already soured by this point. Gone were the days that I awoke with a twinkle in my eye (even at 6 am) just so very happy to run at all.

Too many setbacks leave a scar, somewhere… not that easily scuffed away by the newness of another season, another opportunity. The honeymoon phase ended when I got my weird hip flexor injury. It so quickly wiped away the optimism of a new start, with the hard realities of those who are injury prone stay injury prone. I didn’t want to get up in the morning, because I didn’t want to run, because I didn’t want to feel that first pain when you know a lot of time off imminently awaits. So, I started sleeping in, I started thinking, maybe three off days is still an okay number for one week… and then I got sick, and then I had my reason to leave.

I basically did two runs during this period:

10/25/2009: RB Perimeter from California, 7.9 miles, 1:13:49 (9:21 min/mile)

This is probably one of my worst runs in years and years. I see that I logged it at 7.9 miles due to the dubious nature of the arroyo… but let’s face it, this run has always been 7.8 miles, so long as I’ve been running it. 9:20, 9:30… does it really matter at that point? To my credit, it was hot when I ran, and I was already coughing up a storm.

10/29/2009: Hillcrest/Orlando/Hill/California, 6 miles, 52:18 (8:47 min/mile)

The guilt crept in once I realized that I could no longer use the excuse “bedridden” to avoid running anymore, so I went on this nice evening jog. It wasn’t such a bad experience, I only felt mildly barfy while I was running. When I returned, however, the coughing returned with a vengeance and I barfed up my dinner. Thankfully I had felt too barfy to eat a large one, so I guess it wasn’t too much of a loss.


After that I stopped running altogether and got fat. If only running fast were as easy to do as getting fat.