After The Half Marathon

As you know, I recently ran my first half marathon.

Turns out, I’m actually pretty good at distance running. I enjoy it. In fact, I don’t really start to enjoy running until about the third mile. If someone had told me, back in high school, when they made us run that terrible ten-minute mile bullshit, that I would always hate the first mile, but love the eighth, I would have thought they were crazy.

And yet, here I am.

The thing is, I think I’m doing it wrong. Maybe it’s my form, or maybe I need to cross-train to build up my support muscles or something. All I know is that right around mile 13 my knees started hurting. I kept running until the finish line, but two days after the half marathon I could barely walk, my knees hurt so bad. They’re still hurting ten days after the race.

This is simply unacceptable. I already signed up for a full marathon in August, which I fully intend to run, so I made an appointment with a running coach. It’s a two-hour thing on Friday, and it’s $150, which hurts a little all on its own, but I’m justifying it with the fact that I would spend more than that on a gym membership (over the next three months), so it balances out. Running is free.

In fact, by that logic, I’ve already saved that much by running the neighborhood instead of joining a gym.

Anyhow, the only way I can possibly tie this to my writing is that I haven’t had any time to listen to my books on tape over the last ten days. Usually I listen while I run (which is pretty much the perfect way to spend an hour or three).

I can’t wait to get back out there.