Mom told me there'd be days like this...

Well, no, actually she didn't, but it works as a title. By my accounting, after having run 3.5K, my trajectory has been one step forward and two back. This leaves me with an accumulating debt of one step per workout, so like someone who has a mortgage he can't pay, I get backwarder and backwarder.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It makes me wonder if my training schedule isn't too hard for my age and fibromyalgia, or am I just listening to my body as it shouts, "Stop, you cretin!!!", and paying too much attention to it? The "Complete Book of Women's Running", the bible I haul around, says in a nutshell that going from jogging to running is a matter of attitude, not speed, and that one must learn to get past that point where your body is begging you on a metaphorical bended knee to give up and go have some chocolate ice cream. The book doesn't go so far as to endorse wholeheartedly the "no pain, no gain" philosophy, but it implies that you'd better get used to the hurt. Or, as a woman advises on a runner's website, stock up on Advil.------------------------------------------------------On the other hand, this is the way it often goes: you have a sudden spasm of progress, then backslide for a few days, before you have another leap forward. This must be my backslide stage but it sure is lasting a long time. Nevertheless, I still have a tactic or two up my sleeve. I'll report on them if I survive the weekend. In the meantime, I'm going to lie low and concentrate on cleaning the refrigerator.

Active resting

As has been mentioned here, active resting to me means an implacable determination not to leave the couch, but this is not what Adrián, my trainer, has in mind. By the time I was through training Bandolero (the sport is called dressage), my abs, shoulders, and arms were howling, and then I got Thursday's training confused with Friday's and spent yesterday trying to run uphill instead of an easy trot on flat land.-----------------------------------------------------------------------The upshot is that today from the get-go, it was obviously going to be a bad day, so I opted for a forced march instead of a run, but I did manage 4.8 K. One of the advantages of a brisk walk is that you can hear the nesting doves cooing, watch the sky lighten, notice that suspicious car going round and round the block, and discover the various styles of hitting the ground as runners go by you. When you are running, the only thing you notice is where the next dose of oxygen is going to come from.--------------------------------------------------------------------There are the pounders, those runners who slam their feet down. They are a mystery to me. How can they do that without permanent joint damage??? Then there are the pancake turners. These runners flop their whole foot down at once, and it sounds like a big pancake being flipped. They too are a mystery to me, because I don't see how they can get their feet in that position unless they have no movement in their ankles. There are the expensive-running-shoe terminators, who scrape along the pavement destroying their Asics. Last but not least, there are the big cats, those runners who land on the forward portion of the foot and sneak up on you silently, breathing quietly, scaring the bejesus out of you because you thought you were alone and could relieve that uncomfortable bloat left over from the tinga tostadas you had for lunch yesterday.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------When I went to see a sports doctor, he told me not to let anyone try to change my way of hitting the ground as I run, because at my age, he told me diplomatically, you just can't teach an old dog new tricks. That's okay, because when I grow up, I'm going to be a big cat.-----------------------------------Take that, Hal.

An "active" rest day..

This means, as my trainer has diplomatically indicated, that I can't spend the day ensconced in the couch watching all the series of "Law and Order". So I'm off to ride Bandolero, where anything that isn't sore from yesterday will get a workout and I can even up the pain. If I get a good picture of him, I'll post it later. Have a good run, friends.

No More Nice Little Granny

Okay, Hal, the gloves are off. Your mother was a cheap toaster with a fork stuck in her heating elements, and you dad was a calcium-encrusted steam iron that spit all over the clothes.

Good morning, Hal

How are you today, Hal, you miserable software jihadist? This morning I got up thinking I was already late for everything and what was the point of it all? Bob mentioned in a comment from yesterday that a path beats a machine every time--which is quite true, to the degree that my treadmill is a dead letter in my book. Oh well, I thought, off to the park, anything but the blasted treadmill where I could at least suffer in private; I was sure that today was going to be a disaster. Are you there, Hal? New paragraph. Well, I said hello to my trainer and started off on today's trot, thinking about Rodrigo who said that on any run, the first two kilometers were hard but after that it gets easy--this from someone who runs half marathons and occasionally dashes from his house to mine, a mere 11.3 K. I laughed hollowly to myself as I struggled along, although a red-letter moment came when I actually passed someone--okay, so what if she was strolling along? It still keeps me out of the finishing-last-as-usual category. All these thoughts ran through my mind as I plowed ahead. Also, it seemed wild to me that I felt pretty good for only having had a cup of coffee and water before hitting the park. By the time I finished, I had run 3.5 K, up from near zero last week. Thank God tomorrow is a rest day, because a whole new world of hurt is going to open up after today's run, and body parts I don't even have any longer are going to ache, wherever they may be. No matter, I rewarded myself with macadamia nut and whole wheat pancakes with blackberries and real maple syrup. Now, for a dose of Advil...

The empty park...

Yesterday we went on daylight savings time in Mexico, so those of us who are usually out at five-thirty or six in the morning were, today, really out at four-thirty or five. This may explain the vast emptiness of the running path. Oh, there were a few hardy souls and even a couple of people walking dogs, but in general it was peculiarly quiet. Okay, Hal, this is a new paragraph. For those of you who never saw "A Space Odyssey", Hal was the psychotic computer that decided to eject a crew member off the space ship. He is alive and well and on Blogspot, ejecting paragraphs from the space ship. As I trotted along, I noticed that new things hurt, and old things seemed fine (no, I don't mean myself with that remark about "old things", applicable though it may be). My teeth are no longer sore, but I noticed during the walking stage of my daily torture that my toes seemed like they were going to separate from the main body of my feet. My scalp hurt for a while, but that wore off--not the scalp itself, but the soreness. I could understand aching toes, but my only explanation for a sore scalp was that the blows from my feet that had been transferred somehow to my teeth had now come to roost in my scalp; could it cause hair loss? Or maybe even hair growth! My mind wandered as I struggled along--it's always best to think of something other than what you are doing-- until I suddenly heard a terrible, rasping breathing. There was no doubt it was breathing, but it sounded ghastly, like someone in extreme difficulty. Could it be me??? I tried to hold my breath to find out, but I couldn't hold it long enough. Eventually a woman passed me (as usual--passing me is sort of the jogging path landmark for knowing you still have vital signs). How in the world could anyone gasping with such agony be out there running?? Who knows, but once she caught up with me, she began breathing normally, and I can only assume that she was pulling out all the stops in order not to be the only person in the park who couldn't pass that little old lady in the Asics running shoes...

Blogspot still dysfunctional...

There will be no paragraphs for you today either, it seems. I'm too tired to protest, however, because today I had to jog down several blocks in a downhill direction and then walk back. I did jog a block and a half on my way back, uphill, but then I faced a complex series of overhead walkways one of our mayors had built over a major street intersection. They are wonderful for pedestrians of all stripes--nice shade in the summer from the lovely trees, runners and strollers are safe from the Nascar escapees disguised as ordinary drivers--but the darned things are an effort to climb when you are already gasping for air. But okay, today's training is under my belt, and I'm afraid to say anything else because, well, damn it, there are no paragraphs!!