Seebo's Run

A running commentary on my training and whatever else emerges from that.

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Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Catching Up

Lately I'm getting into a habit of blogging every couple of days instead of daily like I used to. Not sure yet if that's long term or what that means, it just is what it is.

Didn't run Thursday, ran about 6 on Friday with Erin and Jody, didn't run yesterday, and ran about 9 this morning on a shortened version of the Tenicum. The overall strategy is the same - still running easy to give my heels time to, well, heal, while getting enough miles in to feed the addiction and not lose all of my fitness. I don't know how long I'll be doing this other than I don't have a target date for ramping things up again.

I said in the last post, on September 10, that I'd write some on September 11 seven years ago in the next post. Didn't think, however, that the next post would be on the 15th. One of my vivid memories of 9/11/01 was was a clear, sunny, Indian summer morning it was. I was in Springfield IL that morning and had just completed an out and back along a trail that started behind the hotel and led through forests and cornfields. I got back from this beautiful run and was walking through the hotel lobby, where the free continental breakfast was laid out and a crowd of people where huddled under the tv. I don't have to write about the rest, and the point is that I associate 9/11 with those Indian summer days, 9/11 crowds out the memories those days otherwise had of runs and football games and the like. But things are different now.

We had several of those days last week. Wednesday, when I last blogged was one of those days, as was Friday when Jody, Erin and I ran up Chester Ave until it dead-ended at Mount Moriah cemetery and wriggled between the bars of the iron fence to run through an overgrown part of the cemetery none of us had previously been in. Its strange to think that nineteenth century families dropped large sums on family burial plots that are now camps for homeless people, and that large obelisk-type grave markers are now overrun with ivy. Made for an eerie feel running through it, but also gave us a new route as we then proceeded through the cemetery to Cobbs Creek Parkway and back home down Thomas Ave.

Yesterday I just didn't run. Driving around later past the Art Museum and through Manayunk my thoughts stopped a few times to think about running through these places and I felt a loss at not having run. The first time in this slow down that I really felt a yearning to have run.

And today was a humid slog through Tinicum. The first mile had me ditching my shirt, ducking behind some bushes, and outlasting stiff legs. The second mile, through the carwash part, had an insect get stuck under my glasses. After hearing a panicked buzzing I felt a burning sensation shoot along my eyebrow to tell me I'd been bit. Nothing serious, but some residual swelling and pain remains. Things calmed down from there as I did my best to focus and just make it through the stickiness. I did scare up a big hawk that might have been an osprey, but I didn't get a good enough look at him to be sure.

And that catches me up. Heels are doing okay, not giving me grief but giving me background aches that most of the time I would see as "normal". Despite the occasional cracks I described, I'm still being patient.

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