Pacing Myself

How slow can I possibly run? I tried to find out this morning. First I walked a block, putting one foot in front of the other, stretching my neck by lifting and lowering my head, then moving it side to side, doing circles, clockwise, anti-clockwise, somewhat startled by the grinding sound coming from the base of my neck. On a tree branch above my head, a crow cackled harshly. Black shirt, black shorts, black hair all tousled, wagging my head - the crow probably saw me as a demented mutant.

At the end of the block, I hopped off the curb and broke into a slow run diagonally across the empty expanse of Quadra Street. I was still putting one foot in front of the other and my sleep-drugged movement felt just as slow as when I was walking a moment earlier; yet now, I was undeniably in running mode. As I loped in slow motion up the gentle grassy slope, I tried to focus on what distinguishes even the slowest run from walking - a miniature explosion in the ball of the foot, mushrooming upward, launching motion through calf and upper leg.

Just after the intersection with Humboldt Street, flanked on either side by ugly new facilities for the very old, the gradient gets steeper. Running up the hill in the cold dark wet mornings last winter, I felt breathless, yet victorious, each time I made it to the crest. I ran the hill grimly, and geared myself up by programming the treadmill to a hill course that was probably too steep and too fast for my strength. I wasn't stupid; I just didn't know any better. I alternated between ignoring and icing injuries - stubborn shin splints, a sudden sharp spasm in the calf, an ankle twitch, a footache.

Now I run the hill easily and I prize my legs like a race horse. Each twinge triggers an anxious awareness of possible derailment. There's the goal of getting to the marathon and making it through what still seems like an inconceivably long distance; yet even more compelling, I don't want to grieve the loss of this rhythmic movement, this deeper breath that fills and swills out the dark unkempt cavities in the lower lungs where old stuck depressive energy resides, this low-key endorphin ecstacy that lights up each cell like a pilot light.

So I pace myself. I run slow, shorten the stride, touch down as lightly as I can. I don't yet float along as easily as the two Japanese-origin runners in the marathon clinic I joined last week. One of them barely lifts up her feet and yet, shuffling along, is at the front of the pack; the other's calves turn over nice and light, regular as a metronome. The accompanying melody should be light and perky, lyrical, maybe just relaxed.

I'm looking forward to seeing those two, and a bunch of other runners at the clinic tonight. For the next sixteen weeks, until the marathon, we will be meeting every Wednesday for running drills and every Saturday for long runs. Some are regulars, taking clinics marathon after marathon, running in packs; this is their community. As always, I'm a spy coming in from the cold, or maybe just an alien, peeking into another form of North American sociability. More on that in another posting. I have to pace myself in this blog as well.