A Passion for Running

Can pain and laughter live in the same place? You bet they can!

Three years ago while training for my first marathon, Aaron, Barry and I were returning from, what was for me, a grueling 32km/20 mile long run. It was one of those runs where I needed every bit of courage and determination I could muster just to keep up.

To make this story make sense, I need to tell you that three weeks prior to this particular run I suffered a fairly major Illiotibial Band injury (if you’ve had IT band problems, you don’t need an explanation of how painful they can be) and that on every run that led up to this one, I was in a constant battle with my IT band. Each of those runs had question marks hanging over them. Would the IT band hold up? Would I get that awful knife-like stabbing pain in the side of my knee? Would I even be able to finish?

Okay, now we can flash forward again to the run…

My breathing was as deep, quick and eratic as it had ever been, my lungs were bursting, my heart was pounding like a big drum, my body was wracked with pain and all the while I worried about whether my IT band would raise it’s ugly head. In short, I was in a panic and was seriously questioning what the HELL I was doing training for a marathon!

So what on god’s green earth could be so funny about that you say? The answer is in one of the shortest conversations I’ve ever had with another soul. (by the way – if you thought this part of the story alone was funny you are one sick puppy!)

Me: (breathing out of control & arms and legs flailing out of control) “f*@k…f*@k!!!”
Aaron: (thinking my IT band troubles had returned) “Where does it hurt?”

Then, a 10 second pause followed while I attempted verbalizing SOMETHING!

Me (finally!): “everywhere!!”
Aaron (brief pause): “well – that’s good!”

Right then, I was struck by the ironic hilarity of the moment. It was GOOD I hurt everywhere because exhaustion was most definitely better than dealing with a terrible injury!!

I remember hearing an internal roar of laughter inside my head even though on the outside I continued in my physical agony for another five minutes of running. After the run, I shared my story with Aaron and Barry and we all had a big laugh.

It’s a memory that will stay with me till I drop dead (hopefully while running).

I found the link to this on a a runner’s blog (thanks Sean).

What a great run I had today! I haven’t felt this good about a hard run since Okanagan International Marathon in October!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been enjoying running as I always do – I just haven’t felt good lately about running with intensity (hard and/or fast). I’ve really been struggling with my intensity level as of late.

I think the turnaround began last Wednesday. That one was a good run but it was tainted with that pinched nerve thing I had. This week, I was 99% healthy and had decided I was going to have a good, hard run – no “ifs, ands or buts”. I even put on the ol’ Nike heart rate monitor for the first time in a few months.

Anyway, I was rewarded by the running gods today. I ran more than 10km in about 52 minutes but that is only half the story – the route I took included four, count ‘em four, big hills (Walterdale, Victoria, Ezio Farone & Bellamy)!

The best part was I had excellent power up those hills and my recovery was also very good.

yabba dabba do!

Okay, so I wasn’t exactly singing on yesterday’s recovery run but it was pretty damn close. I, unlike a lot of people, absolutely love running in the rain – unless of course it’s accompanied with freezing cold and/or too much wind which yesterday’s run wasn’t.

A nice easy 5k run in the rain while shooting the S%@t and having some laughs with a buddy – you can’t ask for more than that.

Besides the pure joy I get from the activity, the main reason I run is very simple – to stay healthy. No big surprise there and I suspect not much different from most other runners.

What may be different between myself and some people is my resolve to keep running over the long haul. My motivation to keep running doesn’t waiver because I’ve had the good fortune (?!) of experiencing the opposite of being healthy. Not long ago, I went through a time when I was largely incapacitated with terrible back pain. There were times when I didn’t leave my home for days on end and when my back would cause me grief for weeks on end. People who suffer with constant pain, usually also suffer with depression and I was no exception. I remember the pain and I remember the depression like it was yesterday.

That memory alone will always keep me running.

Over the past few years, I’ve acquired some powerful new reasons to keep running.

Becoming a husband and father provides all kinds of positive reinforcement for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I’m 36 and have children aged six and two which means by the time “the boy” is 15, I’ll be 49 (ouch – that’s hard to think about!). I’d like my kids to have a dad who can run around a soccer field with them, shoot some hockey pucks and play catch. I don’t want them to have a dad who lays on the couch watching TV with a big gut hanging over his belt, complaining about his aching back and missing out on the joys of fatherhood.

Finally, one other very important thing keeps me going – my running buddies, Aaron & Tom, Corinne & Doug, Nick and Lesley (aka “Mother Goose”)!

What keeps you going?

Went for a lunch run with my little sister Corinne today (she’s not my sister!). We ran between 9 and 10 km in about 46 minutes. Not bad considering it was supposed to be a slow run and it was 22 degrees celcius for the first time this spring so it felt HOT! 22 degrees might not seem hot to you unless you’re from Canada where we’ve just emerged from a winter that got as cold as -40!

It was an enjoyable run and the best part was my pinched nerve thingy is almost gone. There is still some discomfort but at least the pain is gone. I guess I get to save myself $40 (or more) in physiotherapy.

Below is a very funny (funny to me anyway!) comic runners will especially appreciate. The fellow who did this has a few more running comics you can view here.

Aaron conceived and organized this amazing event this past fall/winter and we just got the video from the producer this week!

Aaron, Tom and I set out to do some speed work today and I am less than happy with my performance. This shoulder/arm/neck thing is really buggin’ me. I never thought a non-leg/back thing would affect me so much but every step I took caused a ton o’ pain to shoot through my shoulder and arm and a pulling sensation in my neck. I tried supporting my bad arm (left) with the other. It helped the pain but also caused my arm to fall asleep! It’s Saturday so my next run isn’t for two days. If it’s not better by then I’ll be visiting my phsyiotherapist or chiropractor.

On the positive side, my health could be way worse and I know this won’t last. Not every run feels as good as the last/next one so I’ll keep that in mind and look forward to my next run – bring it on!

Last night Google “crawled” our website. You can think of a crawl as a scan of the entire world wide web’s billions(!) of pages. These crawls are done by a network of over 15,000 computers called “bots” that scan the web in order to find websites and make a map of the internet so you and I can find the things we want to find. We’ve learned Google does a complete crawl of the web about every 30 days. Strangely, Aaron and I seem to be developing a rather pavlovian response to these monthly crawls! We’ve been at this a few months and each time the crawl happens, we rush to see how we rank in searches, try to figure out how to get better, make changes and wait nervously for the next crawl.

We have found it usually takes about a day after the crawl for Google to update its index (map) so we are in nail biting time. Maybe more accurately I’m in nail biting time since Aaron is not a nail biter!