Running Fool

January 21st, 2008

Tags: dance, insight, life, running, swing

I ran five miles yesterday. This is taking some time to sink in, and I still don’t quite believe it myself. It’s certainly an accomplishment for someone who came from the world of morbid obesity, and I am having a hard time not being smug at everyone I know.

Of course there are some caveats- I scaled my speed down to a 10 minute mile with ten second negative splits on the mile, so other than the distance increase I wasn’t really pushing myself. Even so it feels like a significant accomplishment not only because it’s the longest I’ve ever run in my entire life, but because I’ve also managed to break past the 3.1 mile mental barrier that comes with training for a much shorter race.

What really struck me about the whole experience is how easy it was to go the extra mile(s). Once I’d gotten up to speed and convinced my body it wasn’t stopping anytime soon, it was just a matter of keeping my mind occupied while my feet did all the work. My iPod really helped with that, but I’m told the bigger races don’t allow headphones. I can already imagining myself stopping after the 3rd mile because I got bored and saw something shiny lying in the road.

Also, pacing is a challenge. It’s easy enough on a treadmill, but when I run outdoors it’s hard for me to throttle back right at the start because I have no real way yet of judging how fast I’m going. This will probably come with time- after all, I started running when it was cold out and I’m a huge wuss about running in subzero weather. Once the weather gets nicer and I can actually run to work I’ll hopefully get better at this.

I find it odd that so many people who train for marathons treat them as single-shot goals. If I’m going to train for something of that magnitude I’d rather build up to it gradually so it’s something I can do on a regular basis, rather than give my all for one big herculean effort and then go back to life as usual.

So where to go next? Well, the mileage buildup program I’m on right now is having me do 6 miles (~10K) next weekend, so I’m within spitting distance of one of my goals. Additionally there’s a half marathon in April that I might accelerate my training for, but part of me isn’t quite ready to make the commitment yet: I want to make sure I’m comfortable at longer distances first (see above), and I still haven’t decided if running is going to supplant dance as my primary personal time suck.

Speaking of dance, on a whim I went to a Swing dance workshop in Dayton last Saturday (whose web page seems to have disappeared), and I had an awesome time (though they ran late and thus I had to miss the last lesson). Reading the description of the event you might have thought that it was a standard series of classes with fancy names- starting with the basics and then building on the same. In reality, the classes assumed that you had some Lindy background already, and rather than boring everyone with relearning the basic, really dug into the nuances and details of good technique. In short, it was Basic Lindy for Advanced Dancers. A day extremely well spent.

Of course, the event also came with a bit of a somber note; on the drive back my mind went into self analysis mode and came to the rather alarming realization that I am once again falling into my old Pittsburgh social patterns: I end up a part of so many social groups that I never seem to be able to really belong to any single one. How I personally define this problem is fairly moot, because I already know what the solution is: I have to give something up. Be it running, be it dance, be it blogging or cooking or my geeky gaming habits, something has to go so I can refocus on the remainder and really commit to them.

Is this anything new? Are you kidding? I’ve known this for years.

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