Run Luau Run

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So on Saturday morning while walking down the stairs, I’m not sure if I took a step funny or what, but I was halted in my tracks by a shooting pain across the middle of my back.  It literally felt like it started on the left and shot across to the right, leaving a streak of enduring pain behind it.

Great! I thought, Just what I need a week before Boston. I thought about my Scared post and laughed. Many of you had warned me that I was either a.) focusing on the negative or b.) tempting fate with humor.  Just to clarify, the post was meant in good humor, though any marathoner will tell you that those thoughts do go through their heads in the week or two before a race.  And so I laughed.  Was this Fate trying to tell me not to toy with or tease her? Was this simply bad luck? Was I going to have to take the last week off completely from running to make sure my back was all right for race day?

It turns out that it was something completely different!

***

On Sunday I had a scheduled 12-miler.  This was to be the last double-digit mile run before the Boston Marathon.  I actually thought about skipping it all together to give my back a break and allow it to mend itself, but I couldn’t resist the urge to get on the course and run those last 6.2 miles of the course that on race day can be a real killer.  Running them would allow my legs to remember what it should feel like on Marathon Monday and hopefully carry me through to a strong finish.

And so I went, back pain and all.

I parked the car a ways from the base of Heartbreak Hill and began to stretch.  My back was not happy.

Maybe this isn’t such a good idea!

But I was determined to at least give it a go.  I was off and soon huffing and puffing up Heartbreak without much of a warm up.  I guess Heartbreak was my warm up.  As I crested the Hill that has ended so many people’s Boston Marathons, I settled into a groove.  It was relatively early, without a whole lot of runners on the course.  Before I knew it, I was at Cleveland Circle, then the CITGO sign, then taking a right on Hereford (where I stuck my hands out and pretended to be an airplane), finally taking a left on Boylston, flying along…

I stopped short of the finish line, just like I had last week.  I was not going to cross it or touch it.

I looked at the finish line and said, I’ll see you next week!, and then I turned around and headed back to my car, 6.2 miles away.

Again, the run flew by and before I knew it, I was done.

Over 12 miles in under 90 minutes, and I felt great.

And guess what? My back pain was gone (and still is!).

So I guess what my back was telling me was that my body needed some miles!  Maybe my body has adjusted to the concept of 50 miles per week and isn’t happy if it doesn’t get it.  I ended last week with my lowest mileage in over 4 month.  32 miles just didn’t/doesn’t feel like enough.

I’ve known for a while that I needed to run to stay sane, what I didn’t realize was that I needed to run to keep aches and pains away.

Why do you run?