Back on the proverbial horse

I went on my first run since August today.

After many months of wonderfully lazy days, where the only exercise I did was running up subway steps or after city buses, I woke up at dawn to make my inaugural post-stress fracture run.

Living so far east in the East Village and not having the luxury of Central Park as my gym anymore, I decided to try running along the East River. (Call me a romantic, but there's nothing I love more than running around bodies of water as the sun rises.) Once I hit the river, I ran south on the promenade to the Williamsburg Bridge. After pondering if I should give running across the Williamsburg Bridge a try (and deciding I should save something that ambitious for another day), I wove my way back up to my East Village apartment through the Lower East Side, but not before stopping at the market for some victory yogurt and Gatorade. I ran for a total of 35 minutes, which was probably about 3.5 miles. I felt like freakin' Rocky.

One of the great things I forgot about running is how much it makes you feel a part of the city. Living so near Central Park, I never thought to run on the streets. But it turns out to be incredibly fun. You see establishments you've never noticed before, mark them down mentally for future visits, and witness the charm and chaos of each city block in a new way. The Lower East Side has many more colorful characters up early on a Saturday morning than the Upper East; I got catcalled a few times, which is surprising since winter running gear makes you look like a bald, cold alien. But for once, I didn't answer catcalls with my surly "I wish death upon you and your progeny" glares. I was delighted that anyone would find my very doughy and bald, cold alien form 30 minutes into a run worth catcalling. One particularly nice man shouted "Honey, you're doing great!" And on this particular day, on this particular run, hearing that from a complete stranger made me feel like I was running up First Avenue in the New York City Marathon. It was a lovely ego boost after all those months of wondering whether or not I still had it in me to make it a whole mile.

Next, I have my heart set on running over the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn and back to get Doughnut Plant--home of possibly the best donuts in the world. (I have final exams to slay first, so this may have to wait until January.) Truth be told, the idea of running over bridges (let alone bridges big enough for cars and subway trains to ferry across) scares me a little. I've never done it before. This morning, in addition to thinking I shouldn't push it and try too much my first time back, I really didn't want to make it halfway across the mile-long bridge only to realize I was reeeeaaally afraid of running on bridges and was experiencing an acute panic attack and needed swift rescuing with only ten dollars in my pocket to aid me. Best to wait until I have willing company who can cry for help if I find myself suddenly mute from terror.

On another note, I have a follow-up MRI on Monday. It should be normal since I haven't had pain in months. But we'll see. Stay tuned.

Joules

I am about an hour away from facing my biology exam.

Dear reader, you may think I'm procrastinating the final push, closing my ears to the loud ticking countdown as I stuff my ears instead with the inspirational riffs of U2 and Florence + the Machine. You may be quelling the urge to shake me by my shoulders right about now as I blog about nothing that could be more important than cramming for the test. But you would be wrong, dear reader.

All things considered, I'm as prepared as I possibly can be. I've tried my hand at every practice multiple choice question and essay (even those I devised myself), reviewed and drawn every functional group and organic macromolecule structure that I might need to reference, and memorized every electronegativity and valence electron value that might trick me as I ponder over polarities and partial charges. If I do poorly today, it won't be for lack of effort. A month ago I had no idea how to study for an exam. As of today, I have a plan to tackle the rest of my rocky semester and a foundation to stand on as I take on the hurdles of my career.

This is my second exam of the semester. I took a chemistry exam--my first test in 3.5 years--on Saturday. And I kicked it in the Joules. Scores aren't out yet (so fingers are still crossed), but I haven't ever walked out of a test feeling quite that confident before. I spent weeks muttering silent on the subway as I flipped through flashcards of polyatomic ions to memorize them. Weeks learning exactly what scientist was responsible for various discoveries in the history of chemistry, and countless fragmented hours doing hundreds of online homework problems (through a move! through no internet!). I even taught myself how to name binary compounds and acids--the topic that's felled me before in previous courses--while I was nursing a 100-degree fever. Today's exam will be much tougher, but I fully plan on giving it all the neurons I've got.

And here's why I'm writing on the Doughy Runner at this moment. It is in this moment, when I finally feel as prepared as I can be (all things considered, and there are tons of considerations), that I realize that studying and mastering exams is an awful lot like training for a marathon. Tons of smaller races and challenges pepper your path, and you absolutely must do the work--studying and homework--in order to be sufficiently prepared for those smaller races. Even cramming is eerily similar to last minute training: you're taking a dangerous risk, and you may strain something.

A week ago, I really thought I might not be cut out for this career. I'm finally starting to believe that I can prove my worst fears wrong.

Duck-like

There is a quote by Michael Caine that I particularly like. "Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath."

Folks, I'm paddling like the dickens. All of what you are about to read has transpired in the past two weeks. Please excuse any anxiety I've accidentally induced.

I packed up and moved to a new neighborhood in Manhattan. I also dealt with a bit of boy drama (ugh) and qualified for a mini-promotion at work (yay). (Whenever I feel heartache, I think of the baron from Sabrina who said to Audrey Hepburn, "Why try to get over it? You speak of love like it was a bad cough.") I also flew home to Texas for Labor Day weekend, where I held adorable babies, causing my ovaries to hurt, and spent some quality time with family for my uncle's 70th birthday surprise bash.

While packing, I discovered a giant rotting hole in the wood floor of my old apartment. Then the movers lost my favorite framed pictures. Shaking of fists ensued. Now we're so trapped with boxes and suitcases in the new place that we're fighting to stay off the A&E show Hoarders.

Somewhere in there, I started physical therapy. I've been doing my exercises (most days), but we progressed too quickly, and in the past 48 hours my pubic bone started hurting again in a stress fracture-y sort of way. Ever since I stopped running, my joints and muscles have been aching and stiffening like never before, as if they're trying to adjust to the sudden lack of 10-mile runs. I make noises when I sit down or get up now. ("Ugh... Oof!")

On top of all this, I became a student again. Taking two premed classes at the local public college, I have learned that I've forgotten pretty much everything. ("Logarithms? Uh oh.") So after my workday is over, I go to class or lab until 10 pm some nights, and I spend my Saturday mornings learning chemistry for 4 hours. Then I study (read: re-teach myself all the material I learned shoddily years ago) and do homework in another dimension, where I actually have time.

All these overwhelming changes and the grown-up issues that come with each make me want to curl into the fetal position and take a butter knife to my wrists. It's too bad I don't have the time to do either.

To get through the insane days, I started drinking coffee--that formerly reviled elixir--for the first time in my life. Now that my bone hurts again, I worry it's partly because of the coffee. But I'm not sure I can live without it now. Sufficient sleep is not really a viable alternative.

On a side note: When I was running, I wasn't dropping any weight, but my body shape changed. My leg muscles transformed into these hard, sculpted things that I'd flex in narcissistic admiration. And to my amazement, I lost the doughy tummy that I had my whole life. As a properly socialized woman, I always hated my round middle (note sarcasm). It was the part that never went away, no matter the exercise or diet.

After the news and mourning properly for a few weeks with food and tears (is there any other way?), the doughiness is back and my muscles have become soft and shapeless again. For a couple of weeks, instead of hating my newly returned round middle, I felt I regained my fertility and femininity--that pouch and those hips so adoringly depicted in centuries-old nude portraits. I felt like Elizabeth Taylor.

What a wonderful honeymoon that was.

The verdict

Boy, do you learn a lot about yourself when you train for a marathon.

A marathon is like a petri dish of life, and every lesson from the microcosm is infinitely instructive. The most important lessons I've learned so far are 1) shortcuts simply don't work, and 2) even though there are no guarantees in life, hope is still essential.

My ortho gave me the diagnosis on Friday morning: I have a stress fracture of my left pubic ramus (a little bone on the pelvis), and a muscle strain of the obturator externus (a little gluteal muscle attached to the pubic ramus and the hip joint). My hip, ironically, is totally fine.

When he pulled up the MRI images on the computer, I could see plain as day how the flattened little bone, unlike its darkly shaded mate on the right side, was entirely white. That couldn't be good. He showed me where these obscure parts are on the body, and indeed they were the hard-to-describe points that've plagued me all along. Stress fractures to the pubic ramus are pretty rare. They usually affect female runners, even elites, who've raced or trained too hard.

Then he gave me the verdict: I couldn't run at all for at least 6 weeks and would require 3 months of physical therapy. I needed complete rest. I asked about cross-training. "You can be on a stationary bike, but you really shouldn't for more than 20 minutes." How much can I run after 6 weeks of rest? "Only a couple miles at a time, but if it hurts at all you have to stop." If I broke any of these rules, this injury would become a recurrent, chronic problem.

My eyes started filling with tears. I knew what this meant: I'd be out for this year's marathon. There was no coming back safely after these 6 weeks of rest because the exercise I could do was too limited. Fortunately, I am able to defer my spot until next year, with all the funds raised so far going toward next year's race.

So here comes the first lesson. I genuinely thought my pristine, uninjured 25-year-old body was somehow above the training rule of gradual mileage increases. I felt that my young body could handle drastic increases as long as I gave it adequate time to rest. But it couldn't. I took a shortcut in my training timeline and ended up setting myself back a year. Evidently, you cannot rush natural processes.

I always took my never having been injured as a sign of luck and invincibility, like a cat with nine lives. But I see now that it only implies I've never given anything my all, never worked hard enough, and never taken any risks worth taking that would result in an injury.

Now for the second lesson about hope and disappointment (and this one's more important). I am not a hoper. Never have been. Early on in life, I learned (incorrectly) that any good performance of mine was a result of pure luck and an inherited ability to learn superficial skills very quickly. I never thought I'd be truly good or expert at anything. A condemned Jill-of-all trades, I had accepted my mediocre fate.

Many years and a good therapist later, I find myself testing this very theory. By picking a career I don't think I have a chance at and signing up for a marathon I don't think I can run, I've begun to aim high and feel the heroin-like rush of optimism for the first time. I've allowed myself to hope for things I never would have before: success based on hard work, and having love and stability in my life.

It also means I've felt the excruciating sting of real disappointment for the first time. With each rejection from a program, a lover, an injury, it's been an unsteady and unfamiliar grieving reaction. With each change, my opinion of hope swings wildly from imagining it as a life-sustaining drug to a damning addiction. I've learned that I don't properly mourn any of these losses, so they all collect on one side of the pendulum and increase my bitterness each time I experience disappointment. (This is the bitterness that colored my recent posts.)

I had the fortune of having a friend visit this weekend--one who's had more risk, disappointment, and injury than most twice her age. As I challenged her staunch allegiance to hope, she conceded that indeed, there is no certainty of a good outcome, regardless of hope or hard work. (She should know--she's a math PhD facing near-impossible career goals.) The emotions of disappointment come from losing hope that your dream will come to fruition, she explained. But hope is the only thing that gives you anything to live for when you've been utterly devastated. It's the new horizon you set for yourself. And that to properly mourn a disappointing outcome, you must properly mourn your loss of hope.

So that's next. Physical recovery, proper grieving, and letting myself hope again.

Evil twin

I feel deep shame. And I'm stepping into confession.

Supposedly, one of the ways you can see the nature of your character is to observe how you deal with adversity. If that's true, I don't think I like the looks of mine.

A bit of background: I do not have a gym membership in the city. Besides the discomfort of feeling like literally a rat on a treadmill (which I get enough of in this city), I have steadfastly refused to fork out even the discounted amount for a gym membership--$80 a month--on my plebeian salary. I knew this might be an issue when I looked at our training schedule, which called for cross training sessions starting in July to strengthen our muscles and encourage us to build our fitness in a non-high impact way.

When my hip began hurting, we were only running on the schedule. As it developed, I cut down my running to twice a week. But I never increased my cross training from, well, nothing. Now my muscles feel doughier and more useless than ever. This makes me incredibly anxious at the thought of feasibly running the marathon in November.

Here's what bothers me: I could've leapt into action a month ago and either joined a gym, had my doctors fill out the health clearance forms to use the university gym, or found some other clever way to work out that didn't involve pounding my joints. But instead, I stubbornly refused to do any exercise except run--the one exercise that I loved so much, but could now injure me--and let the weeks accumulate. I allowed the uncertainty of not having a diagnostic MRI dictate whether or not I would maintain my fitness.

Now why on earth would I do something like this when I know it'll hurt me in the end? When I am struck by inspiration or passion, I move mountains. That's the good me. But the minute I feel ambivalent or victimized by a situation, I often let myself slide into apathy and a much worse situation.

It's self-sabotage. And I am supremely good at it. Part of me has always wanted an excuse to fail--some external reason for not succeeding that has nothing to do with my own talent or skill. If I gave something my all and still failed, that would mean that I failed.

But I know better now. Getting injured is not my fault, but not doing a better job of doing damage control is. The truth is, I never thought I could successfully run the marathon. Defying my own worst beliefs about myself is one of the major reasons I decided to undertake such an insane goal.

I feel like I've disappointed not only myself, but everyone who's supported me along the way. And I'm not comfortable with letting the status quo continue. Things have to change.

Hip update: I did have my MRI and X-ray localized steroid injection (for diagnostic purposes) on Friday.  They filled 6 giant syringes and just kept pushing more and more radioactive dye into the capsule surrounding my hip joint to expand it for prime viewing. The needle has to hit bone to find the joint, and boy is that a weird feeling! I called for preliminary MRI results on Monday, and the report said there were abnormal signals indicating bone marrow edema and muscle strain. No definite word on a stress fracture or a labral tear yet. Hopefully Friday, when I see my orthopedist, he can shed some light on what's going on.

Just a number

Folks, it's time to face facts. I may not be able to run in November.

Nothing scares me more to say. In fact, I've avoided blogging partly because July has been such a depressing month for my running. To avoid hip pain, I've consistently run twice a week (as opposed to 3-4 times a week), until 2 weekends ago, when I idiotically ran 5 miles on a Sunday after a shortened Saturday team run. (The schedule had us running 14, but because of the dangerous heat, the coaches had us do only 6.)

My times have been gradually slowing, and I've been able to get through fewer and fewer miles at a time. Tuesday night, I was only able to run 3 miles before the hip pain worried me too much to continue. (I was running with my doctor buddy, and she said I shouldn't run if I felt pain while I was running, since it could be a sign that I'm simply making whatever's inflamed or broken worse.)

And boy, does it hurt. It hurt so much Tuesday night that I couldn't catch my breath while I was running. You know the shallow breaths you take when you're trying to walk or run a certain way to prevent pain? I realized that I haven't been taking full, deep breaths when I run for almost a month now. It then made perfect sense that I can't go fast; how can I be fast if I can't breathe as much as I need to? Afterwards, I limped the whole way home. It still hurts today, and I'm back to holding my breath in pain whenever I put pants on (from the weight-shifting), which is where I was a month and a half ago.

My whole life, the only thing that kept me back from being an active and sporty type was cardiovascular fitness. I just felt like a schlub and the inertia of daily life without exercise was tough to break out of. Now, for the first time I find myself in the position of being held back by something else--by an injury--and for once cardiovascular fitness is not the problem. In fact, before the pain became a real issue, all I had to do was pack on the miles, and in a few days' time, I'd feel like I could run forever without stopping. What a wonderful feeling that was! I found I could leap up subway stairs two at a time and not even feel out of breath. Now that I can't put in the mileage, my cardiovascular fitness is obviously suffering.

This injury has become a big source of anxiety in my life. I get nightmares. (For other reasons, too, to be fair.) The worry of training through pain before you have a diagnosis is an awful feeling. The dilemma you encounter is this: if the injury is serious and you already need surgery, then you're overtraining and every step you take will injure yourself further. But if it's not serious and requires only a cortisone injection or physical therapy, then you could be undertraining and might not catch up in time for the marathon.

It's taken me over a month to get my MRI, which is tomorrow, properly scheduled. During this month, I've been rescheduled twice from the same incompetent surgeon's office. The first time, they called me a day before my MRI to tell me that their satellite radiology office on the east side doesn't take my insurance. (They then waffled a couple times more to tell me they did--no wait, never mind, they don't--take my insurance.) For the second MRI date, I took a half day off from work, schlepped up to the hospital in another part of town, and was in the gown and ready to go into the machine... before the techs realized they hadn't scheduled me for a special injection beforehand. Then they started yelling at me (the patient!) because they were mad that it was incorrectly scheduled and wasted their time, and because they had never heard of my surgeon before. (His clinic is one floor above the MRI room, and they were pressing me for his phone number.) I was not pleased.

But I'm headed back tomorrow to their MRI department, and again next Friday to the same orthopedic surgeon, because I've discovered that good surgeons are busy people. Of course I refuse to be operated on by my original surgeon, who's young and may err on the side of over-operating (not to mention under-ordering). I want a surgeon who will only operate if he/she feels it's warranted. So I've chosen another hip specialist who was recommended very highly to me by one of our attending surgeons at MSK. But his first available appointment is the last week of October, one week before the marathon. Ultimately, I need an expert to take a look at what's wrong sooner rather than later. So I'm sucking it up for now and getting whatever care I can, then I will go to the hip specialist for a second opinion in October.

This whole excruciating process has helped me finally experience the frustrating agony of being a patient at the mercy of hospitals in New York. It's so easy to have your case slip through the cracks because of the sheer volume of patients in this city. I felt fortunate and spoiled that we treat our patients better and have more efficient systems in place at MSK (even if waiting times are still a problem). We sometimes fail, but we try very hard to make our patients feel like they are being taken care of, and many of our clinical processes are already rock-solid, even if they're not perfect.

I'm not gonna lie: I feel very defeated by the entire situation. I'm happy that I've been able to raise nearly my goal amount for cancer research (I'm a few hundred dollars short of my $3000 goal), but the very real possibility of not running in November has me very nervous and unhappy. All I want is to cross the start and finish lines in New York that blustery day on my own two feet, having run the majority of the miles.

11 miles & the great big wall

So I ran 11 miles last night. I'd like to casually slip that into every conversation I have.

Until about 10.8 miles, I really didn't think I was going to make it. And miraculously, it wasn't because of joint pain or being winded. Instead, I hit a mini-version of what runners call "the wall"--a state of mental and physical disarray because you've depleted your glycogen stores (i.e., all the stored energy in your body). The wall is that sickening feeling when your body has nothing left to burn but fat.

It was the first time I'd ever felt the feeling of running out of chemical energy.

Unlike marathoners who traditionally hit the wall at mile 20, I hit the wall at about mile 9. I met a few team members for this 11-mile run, and in my rush to get from work to therapy to the park, I hadn't eaten or drank anything since about 1:30 pm, when I had a soy latte that I had an allergic reaction to and half a piece of gingerbread chocolate. (Both were delicious, despite the fact that my mouth was itchy.) And all I grabbed was plain water for the run. So I was in a world of hurt at mile 9. My feet kept cramping, and I got this strange nauseous feeling, where my gag reflex was being triggered, but I had nothing but water in my stomach and no urge to actually throw up. It just felt really uncomfortable. And I started shuffling, like the 90-year-old runners who lean to one side and look like their feet don't even lift off the ground, but keep going for miles and miles.

It was such a weird feeling. I couldn't form sentences properly. Nothing I was saying really made a lot of sense. My running partner at the time must've thought I was insane. And it wasn't something I could rally and get over; I just had to keep going until my body realized I wasn't going to let it stop simply because there was no glycogen left.

But somehow, God- and teammate-willing, I made it. And it felt un-freaking-believable to know I just ran a distance that was 2 miles short of a half-marathon. It was 3 miles longer than I'd ever run before. I ran for over 2 hours and burned over 1100 calories. That's a lot of firsts.

Injury update: I went to the orthopedic surgeon this morning and got my hip x-rayed. It was clean, but from the physical exam, the doctor could tell from my left-sided adducting leg weakness and various pain points that I need a contrast MRI for it. So that's next. It looks like it may be a labral tear (which requires surgery to help heal the hip joint cushioning tissue) or a stress fracture (which would keep me off of the roads for a few weeks). I'll keep you posted.

Too fast, too insecure

I went for an 8-mile run in Central Park today with the team. It's a new distance (they all are, really), and I surprised myself by being able to make it the whole way through, only walking less than a minute throughout.

But as per usual, I went out too fast. I ran at a much faster pace than I usually do, while trying to hold down an animated conversation. My usual running buddy missed the run today, so I ran and talked with someone new. She's run several half marathons before, and her best time is under 2 hours! So after our first 4-mile lap and my insisting that she run at her own pace, she sped ahead.

I spent the next 4 (music-less and very slow) miles wondering why I had this tendency to go out too fast. Everyone does it, but unlike others, I cannot seem to resist the urge, despite my better judgment, to keep up with my new faster companions. And then it hit me. It's insecurity. 100%.

When you find someone who runs approximately at your pace and you want to hear their stories, you push yourself so you don't miss out on any. But aren't there plenty of other runners who run at my speed? Wouldn't I simply settle in with someone else?

My fear, in life and in running, is that there may be plenty of other runners in the sea, but they may not like me and want to run with me. It's pure insecurity.

Knowing that insecurity is the source of my bad habit should make it easier to hold myself in check. But I know that next time, I'll probably succumb again and go too fast for my own good. Awareness alone won't change this fundamental part of my personality, so it'll still affect my running.

Injury update: I didn't run all week (except for the Monday shin-locking fiasco), but did 8 today, which felt painful, but wasn't unbearable. Unfortunately, today I googled "groin pain running" and saw all kinds of articles detailing symptoms that describe the pain I'm feeling much more accurately than anything I've found yet... And they're all things that require surgery, like an inguinal hernia (I've had one before, too, which makes it somewhat likely) and iliopsoas tendonitis. Now I'm really nervous and am definitely calling the doctor on Monday. These would certainly explain why icing and stretching have not helped at all (which a groin or inner thigh strain would've responded to). Is it surgery time for the Doughy Runner? Stay tuned.

Knots

It's been a terrifying week or two. I haven't mentioned it because I tend to write about the good runs and  neglect the bad runs. But it's blunt, brutal honesty time. I promised I'd deliver a faithful account of what this life is like, and I won't renege now.

I'm scared I'm not going to finish the marathon because of injuries. I had not felt this fear before. The mileage keeps racking up every week on the training schedule, and looking at it gives me palpitations. I consistently miss a run or shorten runs every week because I'm afraid of exacerbating whatever random pain I'm feeling at the moment. Then I feel like a weaker person, one that doesn't have the tenacity or athleticism to join the ranks of other successful marathoners.

And I dread my runs. It's gotten steadily worse. The night before a run, my thoughts race and I can't sleep. Even the day before, I worry about the next day's run. Not sleeping makes me more anxious, because intellectually I know that you need sleep above all else to repair all the pounding (small muscle tears) from training. It's the only way you get stronger.

So I try pushing through the anxiety. If I make it out to the park for a run, sometimes it's worth the trip, but often it feels awful and unrewarding. (It almost always sucks for the first several miles.) Monday was one of those awful runs--probably the worst so far. Despite having planned a 7-mile run, I ran about a mile before my front shin muscles locked into rocks. Rocks. I had never felt muscles that hard before. It's really unpleasant when you need them to be pliable and useful, but you're just bouncing on stiff muscles that aren't absorbing shock properly. I debated whether or not I should run on the rocks for the remainder of the 7 miles, and decided it was probably best to avoid injury and go home. If you could bottle that feeling, you'd know there's almost nothing more deflating.

To add injury to insult, I think I tore or strained my inner thigh/groin muscle(s). Now I've dealt with knee pain or the random achilles/shin pain before. Even Monday's run didn't scare me to the point of wondering if I could run anymore. But this inner thigh pain is something else. Bad enough that it often hurts to walk. It feels like your femur unnaturally digs into your hip bone or something, the minute you lift your leg and try to bear weight on that leg. It's awful. The elongated area stemming from my groin to my mid-inner thigh feels like a bad bruise and hasn't improved with daily icing.

And truthfully, on my Monday run it wasn't just the shins. The inner thigh/groin pain was there as well, but combined with this weird pain radiating from my sacrum (small of my back) to my left groin area. Sacral fractures are common in women who run (the great marathoner Paula Radcliffe has had them). It makes sense when you realize that all that vibration, all that pounding and pressure, has to go somewhere. And the crux of all your running joints--what absorbs all that shock--is that bone, the sacrum. So when I started feeling that weird pressure/pain in that area every time my feet connected with the ground and the weight of my body vibrated from my legs up to my back, I got really scared.

Dreading runs mentally is bad enough. (It's an intimidating feeling when you see all those miles you're supposed to be running on the training chart staring you down.) But the worry from looming injury is much more frightening. It feels like something I can't overcome with sheer will. I've never felt so out of control of my situation, like I can't cajole my body into cooperating with my goals if it doesn't want to. I've never broken a bone or tore a muscle before, and I don't fancy starting now.

So I'm calling a doctor and taking a bit of time off from running for now. Word's still out on whether or not I'll be at the long run this Saturday. They are truly the only fun parts of training that I actually look forward to these days. Having a running buddy to swap life stories with helps you suck it up, ignore the pain, and keep moving forward. But these long runs are made even more fun because we only find out where they are mid-week. Like a spy mission. They email us the time and place and you don't have a chance to second guess. You just have to show up. It's kind of awesome.

I just wish everything would cooperate.

Prospect Park

We had our second team run today in Prospect Park at 7 am. That meant I had to drag my butt out to Brooklyn at 6 am on a Saturday. I transferred trains 4 times and cursed like a sailor for much of the wait times. Once there, we kicked off on, what was for me, an unfamiliar terrain. It was cool and cloudy, perfect conditions for running. A bike race was going on, and hordes of bikes kept vrooming past us while we clung to the curb.

I had the extraordinary luxury of running with a new friend on the team who's run Boston before (as in the Boston Marathon). She's awesome. She's an MD who works at NYU and shares lots of great stories. Generously, she insisted we go at my pace (much slower than her 4:03 marathon pace), and we chatted the entire time. I didn't even need music. Near the end, I even hit the supposed "runner's high," where your endorphins freely flow and you feel like you can run forever. I felt immune to the illiotibial band pain around my knees and the weird hamstring/groin pain that's plagued me even while walking this week. When all was said and done, we ran two slightly hilly laps of Prospect Park, or 7.36 miles, the farthest I've ever run. When we crossed our invisible finish line, my arms were definitely raised and I was shouting something incoherent.

We then saw that the already glorious entrance to the park at Grand Army Plaza (it has its own Arc de Triomphe!) had become a beautiful open air market with fresh flowers, organic produce, and fresh bread. It looked like a farm had been brought to Brooklyn's doorstep. So my new running friend and I wound our way through the stands, I bought some very stinky cheese and sweet peas, and then we parted ways. By then, the sun had come out. As I walked underneath and marveled at the Grand Army Plaza arch, the planes flying close overhead, the giant fountain spraying water above its tall bronze statues, and the most adorable little boy running awkwardly after his sister, I felt completely and utterly at bliss. I felt privileged to experience this weird world--something I'd ordinarily never be a part of--before most people were up for the day. That's probably the true runner's high.