Sidelined???

There is an old runners joke.

One day, a runner (let's call him Jim) runs into another runner in the park who he's never met. Being a friendly guy, Jim asks the man to join him, which he does. Jim turns to him and says, "So, do you run here often?" to which the man replies, "Oh yeah, I usually come in the mornings, though, and then do my weight training in the afternoon before my speed work." "Wow," says Jim, "do you do all three every day?" He says, "I try to change it up, but I usually run about 150 miles a week." Jim, extremely impressed, then asks, "What race are you getting ready for?" To which the man says, "Oh, I don't race, it gets in the way of my training."

Believe me, if you're a runner, you get it.

Here I am, coming off of my marathon, and I'm completely sidelined by it. 26.2 miles injures your body. It's a slow, self inflicted wound. Your muscles tear apart, your ligaments and tendons swell, your fluids are drained, and your glycogen is depleted. Like ANY injury, it takes time to bounce back.

The problem? It's not as if you tripped. You didn't fall over or overtrain or pull a muscle. You put your body through a meat grinder, on purpose. And while it was an amazing purpose, you still have to live with the consequences.

So instead of flying down the trail on an eight mile spree, joyous, ebullient, triumphant, I'm shuffling down the road on a 1.5 mile jog and turning my ankle on a piece of gravel because my ligaments are still too weak to stand up to such varied terrain. Death by pebble. While friends are organizing epic 5 hour mountain biking/trail running excursions followed by massive amounts of taco eating, I'm thinking of doing a slow 6 mile run on the greenway. I'm getting left behind.

Of course, I understand that this rest period is actually extremely important if I want to spend the gorgeous upcoming weather injury free. At the same time, any thoughts of running another marathon anytime sooner than October have hightailed the scene. I want to spend my summer in epic proportions without worrying about ruining any race time or distance. I want to run and bike whatever I feel I can do that day rather than what my race schedule calls for. I don't want to carb load, I don't want to taper, and I certainly don't want to recover. Rest? Sure. Days off? Of course.

But I don't want to put myself into another state of self imposed "sidelined" anytime soon.