Running In Place

Now.  Back to business. 

After oh-so-patiently waiting for my Man Overboard foot to heal up, and then waiting for the world’s shittiest head cold to clear up, I have ran (runned?)!  Monday I hit the towpath and did two nice & easy miles with a little bit of soreness in my arch and an occasional, highly unpleasant, numb sensation in my toes.  Afterward I was apparently no worse for the wear so I rested on Tuesday and hit my first Development Run since 2005 on Wednesday.  I did the 2 mile rather than the 10K so as not to push my luck right off the bat.  Even the short run involves a good amount of uphill so I definitely felt like it was worth the while.  No numbness and the barest notice of the arch - so I’m calling all good. 

It might be recalled that I have taken my running skirt out for a spin on the towpath.  I was a little self conscious but of the few people that I came across I heard no shrieks of laughter or terror so I considered it a successful debut.  Since then, I had purchased an “athletic skirt,” which seems to be a little more suited to my figure, and the Wednesday night run seemed like as good a place as any to test my ego integrity.  Besides, with 400 or so runners, there was bound to be some other skirted chick to commiserate with…right?  Ahem.  In the end, if anyone even gave half the shit about what I was wearing that I’d imagined they would, I was unaware.  It was a hot, big hill run and I chugged along just fine and finished strong, pulling ahead of a girl right at the end who I’d been chasing the whole way - so I had no complaints.  It got me to looking forward to tackling the 10K in a couple of weeks.

While walking back to the parking lot, I was a few steps behind a high school age girl and guy who had also run.  She looked back at me and then I heard her mumble something to him and give what she might possibly have thought was a subtle head gesture back towards me.  I waited, half smiling, until he turned around to apparently look at something that was in the distance behind me.  Then I waved to him and gave him a full-on smile.  He did a quick face-forward and I contemplated catching up to them and making her aware that the skirt beat the shit out of creeping shorts on any day.  I was sure she would have related as it was obvious to the most casual observer she had an intimate understanding of the concept of bunching.  But, in the end, it didn’t matter.  I’d arrived there feeling so anxious that I might be noticed - because if they noticed my skirt they might notice how out of shape I am, and ungainly, and slow, and blah, and blah, and blah.  Then I ran.  And it was all about getting up that big hill, then passing people on the downhill, then giving that great big push to pull out a good finish.  By the time I actually was being looked at, by teenagers no less - whose whole social existence is based on judging others against their own conformity (while fancying themselves the world’s first rebels) - I was untouchable.  I think it’s going to be a good summer, whether the world ever gets used to me flouncing around in my skirt or not.