On the third day she ran again

Or at least hobbled. It was like my brain and muscles didn't want to play with each other anymore. The first part was sort of strange, like everything knew what it was supposed to be doing, but wasn't sure in what order. Then, the body sort of caught up with the brain and we chugged along. On the return leg, the the body forgot again.

The insane thing is there's this tiny nagging part of me that says, "C'mon, do it again, that wasn't so tough." And the crazier part is, it wasn't. Well, of course it was, but I had decided, for some reason, that a marathon would be so much harder than anything else I have done - running or otherwise. It is hard, but it wasn't completely beyond my capabilities, as I had been telling myself. Before, only crazy people, like BT and Arvay, ran such ridiculous distances.

When I used to swim, I always enjoyed practice more than anything. Swim meets were fun, but it was a lot of sitting around and I never felt that same sense of accomplishment as I did busting out a set of hundreds on some insane interval. Running is the opposite. The races are when you feel the most accomplished. It may be because, this time, I am only racing myself and my clock. During the swimming days, there was always someone else to try and beat. I started really running (or rather jogging) in college, when I started doing the swim-bike-run thing. Eventually it morphed into my exercise of choice. I still love the way I feel in the water, but swimming laps is tedious. I love being on my bike, but going for long bike rides is sort of uncomfortable and I will never invest in really good bike. So running it is, until it isn't for some injury or another, but I like that it has become my sport of choice. It works.