Flashes of Panic

My training, right now, could be best described as irregular. I try to get out six days a week, and I try to do more than an hour when I feel like it, but I don’t if I don’t. I’m plateaued at this particular level, without the time or energy to devote to pushing beyond it; I’m using that energy elsewhere.

The unusual structure comes from the once-a-week training group I’ve been running with for about sixteen months now. I’ve never been a centerpiece here, since I signed up to be A’s rabbit, and lately I’ve been running with either the low-mileage middle-distance women or the 25-year-old with significantly faster PRs. (He’ll spot me eight or ten seconds, then blow by me midway through each repeat.) Most of us are there for the coach, who has a bigger name than any of us and tells some entertaining stories.

Last week, for example, it was just me, the young guy, and Coach. They arrived together—Dan drives Coach, who can’t see well enough to drive after dark—and both of them joined my warmup, which is unusual. He wanted to talk about the Trials the previous weekend, and neither Dan nor I were eager to prod him to start the workout. We wound up running close to an hour with him, more than he’d run in two years, he said, and we didn’t do any workout to speak of.

This weekend, on two of my runs in Amherst, I passed a (relatively) young man who lives in our neighborhood and gets around in a wheelchair. It’s obviously one of these heavy, hard-to-move wheelchairs made by designers who expect people in wheelchairs to be pushed everywhere, but I see him struggling to push himself around the sidewalks while someone else walks beside him. I don’t know what I would say when I go by—is he enjoying the struggle, or is he fighting something? What does he see in me when I go by?—so it’s a good thing nobody really expects me to say anything.

This week, we moved indoors, and I put my spikes back on. Between repeats, I kept tripping as I would catch my feet on the track; it’s a miracle I didn’t go down. Dan and I were both laughing about it by about the third repeat. “Coach,” I said, “I need to get going; I keep tripping over my own feet when I slow down!”

I was grinning when I took off, and I was still grinning halfway around the track. My legs felt good, tired but not burning, I was on my toes and moving pretty well, and I thought, why wouldn’t I be smiling? I’m still able to come out on a Wednesday evening and push myself, apply a little force to the world and get it back through a pair of shoes with teeth. I can run 800m repeats, right on the edge between endurance and speed, even if neither are what they were five years ago. I can move around the world on my own two feet. Why wouldn’t I be happy about that?

Now Playing: The Only One I Know from Some Friendly by The Charlatans