Running Journal 14

One small step for Sven, a giant leap for Svenkind.

Still running only once a week, but now I'm actually running. Not just jogging, and not a heel-toe simulation of running that's more like a fast walk. If you have ever run, you know the difference. And if you have ever been a runner, you know the difference makes all the difference in the world.

For the record, people who know about these things says it takes seven years to become a runner. Many people run once in a while, and some run with regularity for a while, but it takes consistent workouts for years to rebuild the muscles, bones, joints, neurons, and cardio-vascular system into those of a runner - cell by aerobically fit cell.

So you don't become a runner by walking or jogging, although (cliche alert) you have to walk before you run, and you don't become a runner in 14 weeks. But if you're a former runner who didn't even know if he was capable of running, it's a small breakthrough to go from a slow but satisfying jog to a slow but distinctly different phenomenological experience of running.

I think the weather had something to do with it. It was so nice on Saturday that I went for a bike ride before dinner, and I'm convinced that cross-training is magic. The weather was even nicer today, and I went directly to the high school track instead of up the bike trail. Maybe that was the secret ingredient: warm weather and the cushioned surface of the track instead of snow and ice on the asphalt bike trail. It all adds up.

The high school soccer team was having an informal practice, but they didn't bother me and I didn't bother them. Staying in the outside lane, I let my legs call the tune, and after a slow warm-up lap, I walked 100 meters and felt refreshed. Another slow 100 meters and I began to stride out a little for the next 100 meters, slowed to a jog for 100, picked up the pace for 100, and then walked 100. 

This quasi-Fartlek workout felt great, so I settled into a comfortable pace alternating between a slow jog and a less-slow jog that I'm defining as a 'run'. Based on that idiosyncratic logic, I am now running. Ask me in seven years if I'm a runner yet.