Yesterday I ran the easy 3 miles to kick off week 4 of marathon training, after which I came home to stretch and strengthen myself, and downed a brown rice protein shake. Everything felt fine, but Wednesday (today), as I walked around campus I felt a tightness in my left hamstring. Worse yet, I started to feel slight pangs of pain in the oposite leg's knee. For the past week I've been wearing “semi-retired” (yes, the poo shoes) pair of running shoes, when not running, as my recovery walking shoes; just for the added comfort. So what am I doing wrong? I won't say that I'm in pain right now, just that something feels off in my leg(s). There's a tenderness to them, that keeps me concerned, but I felt well enough to take on today's 4 miles, as long as I promised myself: 1) I would take it easy 2) at the first signs of pain, I would drop to a walk.
Do you know what usually happens at around the 1st mile marker? Any uncomfortableness or sluggishness that I'm feeling subsides, and I fall into a groove: endorphins flowing through my system, alpha-waves charging across my neurons, as running becomes second nature. This is the comfort zone. I know other long distance runners out there will recognize this existing in some portion of their run. This is the moment I relate things to present moment awareness. Breathing in and out, the biomechanics of human essence propelling you forward, and you are neither fatigued nor overly energetic: you just are. I feel like a lot of times in this moment you surprise yourself the most. Maybe you feel terrible, but end up running faster than your expectations led you to believe, like Vincent mentioned, or maybe pain just takes a backseat to doing, and you no longer feel you need to slow down, and take those last few miles at a faster pace than you probably should, especially, if this is a “recovery”, LSD, or easy run, pushing yourself too far could be detrimental to your progress.
Here's the other thing I considered today: what if the pain I'm currently feeling is due to over-stretching? When ITBS reared its hideously ugly head, with crooked yellow fangs dripping with viscous venom so severe that it paralyzed me in fear just by mere thought alone, the first thing I looked into was stretching as a cure. So within my ice + heat + stretch + strengthen routine, I thought, what if I threw off the harmony of balance and moderation by relying too heavily on one thing over the others? It's as if I'm doing something almost right, because I am seeing results, but at the same time the adjoining areas are being adversely effected. Would this explain why, my ITBS effected knee doesn't hurt anymore, but the pain that exists in my left leg has mobilized and, like a rebel force tracking down the shield generator on an Endor moon, moved upward into other regions of my leg? Have I ignored moderation, and in doing so, exerted my will for recovery in the wrong direction? Isn't moderation the key that opens any door? If so, I'd like to see the size of the key that opens the 26.2 mile door now, so I know exactly what I will be carrying on the day I embark on that whole hell of a long distance run.
