Today it finally happened. And what a day for it. Since writing about wanting to run a 5K as a goal I had been trying and trying, plodding around a gravel walking/jogging track which rings a shopping center in South Austin. I dodged puddles, bikes and dogs and ran in the Austin summer heat. Still, the 5K distance proved elusive. Shin splints got me for a while, then a pulled calf muscle sidelined me.
Then
even finding right time to run was challenging. Running around that unlit track
in the dark wasn’t practical or safe since so much of it wove through thick
trees and had no lighting. My hours at work plus the commute home kept me out
after dark for the winter months, so I had to think of something else. I
decided to sacrifice sleep and began running around my neighborhood. My alarm
went off at 5:15 am on running days. Thankfully my girlfriend and dog made the
2-3 morning-per-week decision not to kill me for doing this (mostly due to
drowsiness on their part more than, you know, not wanting to kill me). The
streets here are lit at night, so in the wee hours I was able to see as I went
about hauling my 215-pound ass around while the sane people slept.
I was
getting close. A week earlier I had made 2.8 miles, less than a half mile from
the goal of what translated into metric as five kilometers (I use a Fitbit
pedometer app on my phone strapped to my arm to measure the distance). I felt I
could get the whole thing in a week or so, and this morning I wanted to equal
that 2.8 again before moving up.
As I
plodded (let me say again that I am much more likely to be mistaken for Sid
Bream than Usain Bolt), I found myself feeling pretty good. The temperature was
in the low 40s, which works for me as I don’t overheat and the briskness of the
air keep me moving on the principle of “the sooner I get the distance in, the
sooner I can freakin’ stop, go inside and take a hot shower.” So when I hit two
miles, I felt tired, I was breathing heavily, but I was also confident I could
get that last .8 in.
Then
one thing happened that hadn’t happened at all in all my mornings, afternoons
or nights of jogging leading up to this. I was heading up the sidewalk on Westgate,
the only semi-busy street on my route (the rest is done on nearly deserted
neighborhood streets between 5:15 and around 6 am), when a series of
early-morning commuters came the other way up the road. Now the sidewalks on
Westgate are in pretty good shape. Note that I wrote “pretty good” and not “perfect.”
That’s because there are some uneven areas. Normally that’s not a problem as
the streetlights illuminate them effectively, but when a car comes the opposite
way the bright headlights cast pitch black shadows over the ground. Naturally,
just then, I didn’t see a driveway seam that was raised a bit and I clipped it
with the front of my foot. The Wednesday commuter was then treated to the site
of a white-jacketed jogger going tumbling to the concrete, which I’m sure drew
a drowsy laugh since I’m sure that would have been my reaction had it been me behind
the wheel.
But I
picked myself up, made sure my phone and pedometer app were fine and set off
again.
I
approached my goal of 2.8 miles, and I was hurting. I was gasping, but
something was telling me to just keep going. I had made it this far, just keep on going. So I did. I put my head
down, I stopped looking at my arm and focused on the podcast. The next time I
looked it read 3.05. I had run three miles at a time for the first time in my
life. At that point, it was easy to motivate myself to continue, and despite
breathing so hard I was literally grunting every exhale, I pounded out the
final steps until it read 3.2, more than five kilometers. I had reached my
goal.
I
returned to the house and sat on the porch, the cool air dropping my body
temperature slowly as I looked down on the screen of my phone. 3.21 miles. I
thought of my girlfriend and how proud she would be of me. She has been
amazingly supportive, as have my cardio-American friends who gave me running
tips and my best friend who had bought me a gift certificate for real running
shoes when I first talked about doing this. With a support system like that I
knew I had to finish the job, and I had.
Later,
I mentioned to my girlfriend how I wanted to get that 5K in before the two-year
anniversary of being hit by a car, the accident that set me off toward this goal
as a way to exorcise the memory of it. For months every time I closed my eyes I
saw that car’s headlights coming at me. Running this distance helped exorcise a
lot of that through exercise. She said my timing was better than I thought. The
accident happened exactly two years
ago today. Perhaps that’s why my body pushed a little harder. Could be.
Whatever
reason, today was the day I felt I had completed my recovery, both mentally and
physically. Two years after one of my worst days, I had one of my better ones.
Take that, oblivious driver!
Here is the original post I wrote on running back in March:
http://mostlycombobulated.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html
