Getting Back on the Asphalt

Yeah, the expression is "getting back on the horse". I don't ride horses. I never have. The very few times I have mounted an animal of the equine persuasion, I have been under the guidance of a trail boss or like authority, and I've been riding an animal which, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Its only real reason for existence if it gets to the stage where people like me are riding it is to plod about wearily in a circle.

Getting back on the asphalt, after two weeks of heavy-duty training followed by three weeks of heavy-duty-fighting-a-nasty-infection-swarming-all-over-your-mouth-nose-and-throat, is rather a cumbersome adventure. Instead of showing you just how far you've come, it shows you just how hard you can fall.

Your lungs give in after twenty paces. Your legs move like rubber appendages fighting very dense water. And when it's below freezing it only gets better! Any heat you're generating is going straight from your lungs to your heart where it spasms, mostly poofs away and then tries to move into your outer limbs, which might as well be the outer limits of the solar system in terms of the efficiency of your body heating them. As your fingers begin to resemble Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto, your face begins to resemble Mars: red, puffy, marred on the surface by breaking blood vessels in the seriously cold December morning in Colorado.

Yet, the wannabe ultrarunner prevailed. Yes, she did ten and a half miles in about three hours, which, when translated to marathoning pace gets you disqualified at about mile twenty, but she prevailed nonetheless, running about 30%, walking/joggin about 70%, and trying to just keep going 100%. It's that last part that counts, right?

Somewhere, a Frog is laughing at me.