Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Strides

Regarding painting: mission accomplished. Well, basically. Just have a few spots in the kitch to touch up. (Red is hard! So many coats! You were right, B...) Oh, and then a final coat of blue on a thin strip of one wall, where a severe case of the splotchies has emerged.

Ah, but then I'll be done, and then I'll have to find something else to distract myself w/. I've been feeling generally anxious--and of course, sad. This makes it sorta hard to concentrate on books, and not even a breezy magazine can hold my attention for very long. Music's been a constant, and I mentioned the writing, and (no surprise) friends and family have been awesome, but it's still hard to return home to a big empty apartment at the end of the day. I do have the running, which, while I haven't written much about it, I've been back into for about a month now, and it's going well. Every week I up my every-other-day sessions by a half mile, and this week has me running two (mi)/walking a half/running two. I haven't really been paying much attention to time, but I know I'm doing faster than the prescribed 10:00s. Still, I'm not hurting, and I'm no doubt going way slower than pre-injury, so I feel okay about it.

This a.m. I huffed it up to the beauteous Prospect Park, which was satisfying because up until this week's two-mile increments, it was hard to justify the 3/4-mile run just to get to the park's edge, when I knew I'd have to turn around so soon after. Anyway, it wasn't all that early, but the rolling green lawn was already speckled w/ people, kids, dogs... I kept to the road rather than veering off along one of the many trails that spoke out from it, and while the (slight) uphills had me breathing a little heavier than I would've liked, it felt good to be out there beneath the trees.

Thing is, running doesn't always, in my experience, live up to its reputation as a mood-stabilizing, mental health-promoting activity. Well, I believe that it does in the long-term, but on a per-run basis, it doesn't necessarily apply. This is because running, for me, tends to magnify my thoughts--so like, whatever it is I'm thinking about during a given round is given added scrutiny. When I'm in an upbeat headspace, or, say, reflecting on some new writing project, this is very much a positive. But then when I'm struggling w/ or mourning something (ahem), it's not so welcome. Still, I like that I seem to be, finally, taking myself seriously as a runner again, because for awhile there, back when my run-walk-runs cleared all of two miles, it wasn't easy to treat my running as anything more than, well, kind of a joke. It's still far short of where it once was, but it's nice to be climbing.

It's like my life in general, really: climbing, just not at my desired pace. ;)

Posted by princess kanomanom @ 3:38 PM