Running as Therapy

How the heck did a week go by without a post from me? Yikes. I think I kept trying to post, then would get distracted, then not post...

...and then life intervened recently and my heart has just not been up to posting. Or doing much of anything, except feeling sorry for myself. Then I realized that I needed to post. But how to tie running into my life drama? It turned out to be easier than I expected. I know you're not here to read about my personal woes, so I won't delve too much into them, but I promise you running fits in here.

To start, I'm no longer doing the Madison to Chicago relay. The costs were adding up, and with furloughs at work, my budget has been stretched to beyond its limits. But, I was still going to go. My friends were so great about it; they were will to cover me until I had the money. I know I'm a lucky girl. Unfortunately, the mother of one of our organizers became very ill. We "fired" her from the race, knowing that she needed to be with her family. The trouble was then finding two more runners. None of us could or were willing to pick up and an extra two legs, and we didn't feel comfortable running the race without our teammate who organized everything, so we decided to call it off. The race director is letting us defer until next year (and who knows what my schedule will be like then). My wallet breathed a brief but disappointed sigh of relief.

Money, though, continues to be a problem.

Part two of my drama comes from, what else, men. One man in particular. Since most of you don't know me, here's how it works with me and men. If I am interested in you, you are not interested in me. If I temporarily get up the courage to get over my crippling fear of rejection and actually express interest in you, you will in fact reject me. This is true 100% of the time. The only certainties in life are death, taxes, and my inability to pique the interest of any man that I am interested in.

Well, this one time, I had a teeny tiny bit of hope. I actually led myself to believe that things would be different this time. As it turns out, I had some aggressive competition for the attention of the above mentioned man. The aggressive competition came from Generically Sexy Woman. Long story short: she is dating him, or has been, for about a month. No "statuses" or whatever yet, but that's the deal. And of course, I am told this in confidence. I can't stalk smack about this person either since, oh wow, we're now facebook friends. I had been thinking of asking Man out for a drink, since we won't see each other much anymore anyway (summer craziness and hey, grad school in August), but I'm not sure I can even do that.

It's depressing. So much so that I haven't had much energy to do anything. Except cry like a little girl. Food isn't even interesting to me now. FOOD!!! Jeez.

So last night, my heart told me that I needed to go for a run. The weather was cool and the Chicago skyline was stunning. So I just wanted to run until I felt something other than hurt and disappointment and trepidation. I headed South from Roscoe along the Lakefront path. I knew I didn't have much time, but I wanted to run forever. When I reached my turn around near North Avenue, I realized that my problems would still be waiting for me when I returned. But I ran anyway. I check Joanie Garmin, who indicated I was running sub 9:30's. I thought about my friend's mom who was sick, another friend who's fiancé unexpectedly both broke off the engagement and broke up with her. My mind wandered to a number of other crappy things in the world. With every thought, I pushed harder, passing people as tried. Even with the knowledge that I was probably making a bigger deal about this than needed, and how much better I have it than other people, I couldn't shake my thoughts of disappointment.

But you know what? Today is a little better. I guess that's what running can do for you. It doesn't make your problems go away. I didn't gain some new insight into the suffering of humanity, or my own inconsequential problems. But I did return home to face them, again, and maybe find a solution, eventually. I might still ask "Man" out for a drink, when I see him in a venue that does not include Generically Sexy Woman.



I guess a broken heart is good for speed work.