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Sunday, December 5, 2010

Trail Run Tragedy

These were the leaves I'd come to see and enjoy. I even stopped along the way to take a quick shot with my phone, and I DO NOT stop during a run.

Now I know that taking pictures of leaves during a run will never be a problem for me again, because I'll not be running that close to leaves along a trail. EVER AGAIN.

Why? Because my IT Band and some obscure muscles in my hip can't handle the steep slopes, soft-give-way-right-under-your-foot surface, and limb jumping that must be done on the trails in my neighborhood. These trails were meant for walking, my friends, and nothing else. Not for me, anyway.

This was the first run, in months, that I couldn't finish. And it was the first that I stopped running because of pain. Not fatigue. Pain. I couldn't walk properly for about a week after that run, but I got a cute shot of some leaves, right?

Then, about a week later, I attempted a run on my treadmill, figuring I was on a really stable surface, and I could stop whenever my hip called for it. Call, it did, and only a mile into that run, I called it off.

Then? I got sick. Snot all over the place, head exploding with pain, coughing up phlegm balls the size of small kittens, sick. Why? Because I dosed myself with thousands of pity-woe-is-me-I-may-never-run-in-another-race SUGAR calories. Smart, eh? So I've gotten myself so sick, that I haven't been to the gym in an entire week. That hasn't happened since, well, since I first injured my hip.

As irony would have it, staying out of the gym and not running seems to have given my hip the break it may have needed, so, I plan to go for a nice, long trail run tomorrow!??!! No, I'm not that stupid. But I do plan to get right back into the gym tomorrow, and I am really looking forward to it.

You know those freaks who are cranky if they don't get to go running each 24 hour period? The people who insist they run for fun? Well, I'm not that far gone yet, but I get them. Because I am truly, anxiously, so excited and thrilled, to go to my Interval class tomorrow. To be part of that group that sweats like crazy for an hour and pushes weights around until muscles beg for mercy. To rush out the door as though I'm headed off to see a great movie with a good friend and drive a little on the manic side, just to get my good spot under the fan, away from those absurd air fresheners that spray poison every five minutes in the face of unsuspecting oxygen-gaspers.

Do I think that my junk-food spree was rewarded with a repaired hip because of a forced recuperationfromtheplague period? No.

But I do think that God will make, and has made some beautiful things out of my messes, in spite of myself.

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
-Romans 8:28