Perspective

12-18-2016 - Blake Watts

Today, I tried running for the first time in more weeks than I care to count. I'm still due to get an MRI on my knee, and I pray that it's just a case of needing a cortisone shot. But for now, I think I can get away with short runs every couple days. This couldn't come a moment too soon, because I've essentially been out of running since June.

For someone who has been running nearly constantly since the early 1980's, this drought has been a real blow to the psyche. Decades of listening to others complain about this or that reason for their layoff without having my own issues has, I must now admit, left me feeling a bit bulletproof. After all, those were other people's problems. Genetics were on my side, for whatever reason. Sure, I had the normal ebb and flow of training and racing times. And I truly did sympathize with, and tried to encourage, those runners who had the bad luck to be injured. I thought I knew how lucky I was to be relatively immune to overuse injuries and bad luck. I did not.

Running is as much a part of my identity as the name on my birth certificate. That's what I thought, at least. It turns out, actually, that the fact that I was able to run was the main ingredient. It's not just that me and those who know me thought of me as 'a runner.' It was also contingent on the fact that I could, at the moment of consideration of my 'runnerness,' go out and run just about any distance with ease.

But the past few months have seen that 'ability' element disappear. At first, I would catch myself planning my daily run and then think, "Ah, not today. Gotta rest the knee." After several months of slow decline, I don't even think about running anymore. And when I am confronted with the idea of running (damn you, Strava!) I experience a little period of mourning, as if a part of myself died.

This is where perspective comes in. At long last, I've been given the gift of TRULY appreciating what we as runners are privileged to do with our time. Just the little taste I got today brought me full circle to the incredible gift it is to run/hobble/walk/trudge through the woods or even down the street.

For those of you who are in a prime phase of healthy running, enjoy the gift today for you know not when it goes away! For those, like me, who are walled off via injury or illness, persevere and savor the return to health, whatever that might look like.

Happy trails,
BW