Tag: Family

Side by Side – Stride for Stride

Ambitious goals and a torn muscle make for maximum frustration.

Two weeks after ripping a muscle in my lower leg, I tested it on the trails.

The first couple minutes brought a gnawing sensation that something wasn’t quite right. By twenty minutes in, my calf felt like it was in a vice grip being squeezed slowly and gently. Every step brought more pain. So I stopped. Angrily and reluctantly.

That was five days ago. Five more days without running. Five days of being hyperconscious of that injury every minute of every day. Grimacing when it causes pain. Rejoicing when I realize an hour has passed and I haven’t felt anything at all.

Days pass quickly. Weeks disappear. Months accumulate. Injuries take time. Goals loom. Training falters.

In September, I’m supposed to run my first marathon in six years. A trail race in the Cowichan Valley. I’ve targeted it. I want it. Not for a time goal. Not to be competitive. Just to complete it. To prove that I can get through the training injury free. To show myself, and my family, and the world that as I near 50, my body can still do what it did at 40, and at 30. And then a muscle tears, and mileage stops and race day nears quickly as I heal slowly.

But the marathon doesn’t matter. Not really. It’s a nice to do, not a must do.

Two weeks later there’s a must do. The Peace Officers Memorial Run from Abbotsford to Victoria. A marathon a day for 3 days straight. I’ve never done that. And I’m honoured to be part of a team that’s trying. We’ll run to honour colleagues and friends who died on the job. Adrenaline and emotion will fuel us. The run will be bigger than any of us. This one matters.

And as I write this, slouched in a chair, leg stretched out before me, I feel that calf muscle. Tight and sore. Reminding me to not even think about running for another week or two. So I won’t. I’ll ride the bike, and stretch and hit the weight room. I’ll yoga myself upside down and punish my core with crunches and leg lifts. I’ll use a heating pad, and ice, and three times a day I’ll choke my coworkers when I sit at my desk, roll up my pant leg and massage A535 into my body, convinced that the more I use and the harder I push, the quicker it will heal.

Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. Time. Patience. Acceptance. I’ve had many running injuries. Sometimes they go away completely. Like they never happened at all. Others come and go, flaring up and subsiding with a will of their own. Some linger. Weave themselves into my body. Attain permanence. Forcing me to learn how to run around them or through them. To navigate the pain.

I walked this morning. With my daughter and our dog. While we played beside a stream my wife ran. Battling injuries of her own she relished a rare few minutes alone.

We hadn’t planned to meet up but we did, in the woods near our home. Our walk in the woods ended in tears for Molly when she banged her finger against a tree. There was no scratch. Not even a hint of blood. But she cried, desperate for a Band-Aid and for her dad to carry her home. Which I’d started doing, when Sonja turned the corner, mid-run. My daughter sprinted to Sonja and showed that uninjured thumb to her mother. And the tears subsided. And she didn’t need a Band-Aid anymore. And she asked to run with her mom.

So she did. In dancing shoes along a dirt path they ran away from me, side by side. Joyful strides both of them. And they were gone for a while. Because Molly kept running and running. Until they turned around and ran back to me. A happy dad taking picture after picture of his daughter and his wife trail running together.

Running. Family. Almost everything I write has those themes. I wish my range and imagination were broader. I wish my writing was funnier. I have taken to heart “write what you know” so I return again and again to those themes. I take inspiration from moments and from pictures. And most of those moments and pictures are running and family.

That’s how a post that started with a torn calf finished with a mom and daughter running together. My calf should heal with time. But it may hurt for a long time. Time will tell. And yet running brought me joy today. A mother and daughter, side by side, stride for stride.

… Although if you look closely at the picture, I’m pretty sure Molly won.

Sonja and Molly Running

 

The Still Centre

Most days work doesn’t bother me. I don’t bring it home. Literally or figuratively.  

This week was different. Darkness followed me home and burrowed inside me, its presence as real as my house and family.

I was sad but not grief stricken. Down, but not depressed. Angry, but not furious. A little bit of everything. Including sleep drunk. Long hours, short nights. Impaired by tiredness.

Toxic stew for the soul.

It can’t be a coincidence that I felt this way during a week in which I did not run. A few days before work exploded I tweaked my calf. Something less than a full rip, something more than a niggle. It was my own fault. I ignored the warning signs my leg sent to my brain. Tightness that I rationalized as dehydration. Soreness that I tried to run through. More than run through – sprint through. My muscle tore when I raced around a gravel track – interval training when I should have been resting.

I just finished Martin Dugard’s To Be A Runner. It is the best book about running I’ve ever read. Sometimes Dugard writes about “the still small voice” inside his head.

Before I got hurt, before work got busy, I went for a run from my office to the ocean. Along the way, I was thinking about Dugard’s book. And misremembering what he had written. Instead of “the still small voice” I started thinking about the still centre. I pictured the still centre as a ball of calm inside me. Relaxing me. Quieting me. Centring me through the little frustrations and aggravations that life throws at all of us daily. That morning I ran along the water at sunrise in Victoria. As beautiful and peaceful a setting as this world has to offer.

Dallas Road.jpeg

The still centre has quickly become a mantra for me. An ideal. An embodiment of what I want to be. Calm, relaxed, peaceful, content.

Exactly the opposite of how I felt this week. I lost the still centre. I didn’t run. Work was tough. I wasn’t my best self. I was not myself at all. Or at least the self I want to be.

It can’t be coincidental that a week in which I did not run was one of my toughest weeks in recent memory. Work would have been awful anyway. There was no getting around that. But movement and breathing, running fast and jogging slow would have taken the edge off. Cleaned out some of the thoughts that clogged my brain. Lightened some of the darkness that lived inside me.

Today was better. A lot better. No, I did not run. But the first run back is just days away. My calf feels good. Maybe even completely healed. I won’t know for sure until I try, but just knowing that a trial run is around the corner brings relief. As did a good sleep. And a day off. The first in a week and a half. It felt like a vacation. Dinner with my wife and her family and our daughter. Laughs, love and pizza on a warm night with a cool breeze and a blue sky.

And before that an afternoon with my daughter. Who I have barely seen lately – out the door before she is awake and home long after she has fallen asleep. More precious than any run could ever be.

Pure joy in her face, her eyes, and in her squeal of delight when I bought her bubble gum ice cream. Which, minutes later and melted, she painted on my nose to make us bubble gum twins. Then down to the ocean, where we saw a dozen seals sunning themselves on a pier. Even the babies barely moved. They just lay there, bellies exposed, at home and at peace. Being themselves. Relishing the scorching sun. Which we fled, finding shade under a magnificent tree. Alone, with an apple, a pillow and a blanket. I relished every millisecond.

Me and Molly under the tree

I need to run. It nurtures and heals. It breaks me down and builds me up. But, when I look back on a rough week that’s ended much better than it started, my abiding memory won’t be that I did not run. Instead I’ll remember today with my family. The people that I love, and that love me. The people that are there for me when my still centre is not.

 

 

 

 

 

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