Today: 6
Present: 268
Count: 38
Four days without running and I can feel it bottled upside me now. A good sign, I have to imagine.
But almost two weeks after the marathon and 7-minute miles feel like a struggle. I wondered today, as I labored under the unseasonly warm San Francisco sun, if what I depleted was really my legs.
There is something visceral about pushing yourself for that long. I mean, three hours goes by like a flash during the week, you forget they're even there. But in a marathon, those three hours stretch out, deepen. You dive into the chasm, explore yourself, find out whats inside.
And when you come out the other side, you find out that you left something along the way. You didn't come completely back.
I look forward to a decent run. I look forward to any spring in my step, whatsoever. But more than that, I look forward to getting my will back.
Maybe I'm making too much of it. Perhaps it is all in my head. But isn't it? Isn't that what the race was all about? Isn't the fact that my legs appear to be hopelessly shot, for way too long after the race, evidence that I ran beyond my means?
Which is ultimately what I set out to do. To test myself. And on the day of the test, I passed. But the aftermath. Oh, the stench of napalm, the scorched earth. To push that far, that deep, beyond the realm of normality, is not without its consequences. Glorious consequences.
I look forward to having licked my wounds and being out there again, ready to run at the sound of the gun.
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