There's a little more spring in my step...

...both literally and figuratively! Storms were predicted to move in Friday afternoon, so after the morning dog walk, I strolled around with my camera to get a few shots of the beautiful spring flowers popping up everywhere. Seeing all of the vivid colors in the sunshine was very therapeutic, even though tree pollen levels are off the charts right now.

After a very quiet day of reading, napping, and taking the dogs on an afternoon walk, I found myself reading the Runner's World Boston Marathon forums. The 114th running of the Boston Marathon is Monday. For the non-runners reading this, the Boston Marathon is a HUGE deal. You can't just slap down an entry fee and show up--you have to earn your way in by running a fast marathon somewhere else. Just how fast depends on your gender and age. If you do well enough at a certified local marathon, you can proudly tell people you have "BQ'd" -- qualified to run Boston. The Boston Marathon is probably the single most prestigious long-distance running event in the United States. It's like competing at USDAA/AKC Nationals in dog agility or being invited to the Olympics. Pretty heady stuff.

I don't know if I will ever even tackle a full marathon, much less BQ or run Boston, but I say all this to convey just how inspiring those forum postings are. Especially now, just before the race, you can feel the over-the-top excitement of the posters as they discuss their travel plans and pre-race rituals. It was impossible to read those messages without getting pretty fired up.

And so I found myself setting out for the gym just before 6:00 to put in some miles of my own. I missed my run on Thursday thanks to my stupid abdominal issues (which I now think were a perfect storm of dietary sensitivities, nothing more), so I am once again in the hole for this week, but I resolved to hit the track with no expectations and see what I could handle.

I walked two laps to warm up and then very gently shifted into higher gear. To be honest, the first three laps felt shockingly bad. My right heel (the one I injured last week) felt stiff, my lower back was stiff, my breathing felt bad--I just felt rusty. I've been forced into inaction too many days these last two weeks, and it clearly caught up with me.

I just kept going, hoping fervently things would improve, and to my enormous relief, I started to loosen up. I felt like a car engine that was finally getting fresh oil circulating properly throughout. About a mile in, I felt like I had come alive at last, every part of me fully awake and aware and ready to run.

The second mile felt delightful. It was bliss hitting my stride and feeling myself move in synch, arms and legs swinging back and forth to my own internal metronome, floating effortlessly around the track, steadily cranking out one lap after another. I was still running a very gentle pace, but that didn't dampen my joy one bit. I hit mile 2 at a sedate 23:09 and walked a lap to sip water and check my systems.

Everything still seemed okay, so I ran the rest of miles 3 and 4, still feeling marvelous and taking the pace up just a bit. The sun came back out after after the foul weather and threw tiny little bars of light precisely across my lane of the track, like the wood slats between the metal rails for a train. I grinned and imagined myself as The Little Engine That Could cranking out the laps. I was breathing a little harder by the time I stopped to walk another lap and surreptitiously sneak a few Sports Beans with my water, but I decided I could probably do another 2 miles, so I picked up the pace once more. If I could complete 39 laps, I would have 6.09 miles under my belt.

Unfortunately, I started faltering about 5 laps from the end. I got a stitch in my side, and then my form started disintegrating. My medial right knee started hurting, and when it got worse instead of better, I broke off my run at 36 laps, 2.4 laps short of 6 miles. Overall, I covered 5.625 miles in 1:03:03 for a pace per mile of 11:12. Not bad considering how awful I felt on Thursday. And if you count my warm-up and cool-down laps, I DID actually go 6 miles. I just didn't quite run all of it.

You know, the longer I write entries for this blog, the harder it gets to write about running. When you're a big-time newbie, everything stands out to you, and you feel like you're on the outside looking in at a circus: "Oh, look! Runners do all these weird things--eat bagels and slurp gels and wear shorts with liners and use BodyGlide to fight amusingly named phenomena like 'chub rub'! Tee hee!" And as you progress, it's exciting to write about new milestones (5 miles! 8 miles! TWELVE miles!) and faster run times.

But eventually, you're not running significantly farther or faster. I've already hit my peak long run for this training cycle (12 miles, last Saturday), and I doubt I will have any training runs before race day faster than the 10:01/mile pace I posted way back on January 30th.

So what's it all about now? The joys of running become subtler and run deeper, get harder to tease out with a hastily typed sentence or two. The superficial externals of props, times, distances fade into the background, give way to something burrowing relentlessly inward, something more timeless and essential, but much harder to pin down in neat rows of words.
I don't think a single word can capture what that internal spark is. Satisfaction? Sure. Pride? Yes. Joy? Definitely. But I could go on and add a dozen words to the list, all of them hitting a part without really illuminating the whole. I think "being in the zone" while you're running is a lot like how dogs live all the time: fully in the moment, fully aware of everything that's happening, using all their strength and senses to run and play and have fun. Something like that.

Case in point: Here's a video of my two dogs chasing each other around during a freak April snowstorm last year. There are few things more breathtaking than dogs running all-out, even in a small confined area.

So, to sum up, I guess I hope to run more like a dog--but with less barking.