Tag Archives: sore

Long Rainy Run

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I haven’t gone on a long run in the rain in a long time. Today I broke the streak. I ran eleven miles, hills and cold and all, in rain all the way. This was fine with me. Running in the rain is peaceful, mesmerizing even, and it means I won’t get too hot. Not only did I get in eleven miles but I also hit the 30 mile mark for a week. That also has not happened for a long time. I felt good, although I did run slowly, mentally and physically. But there was one problem.

Once when I ran the Vermont City Marathon in Burlington, it rained. Not the whole time and not all that hard, but it was a wet day, rain on an off. At every aid station volunteers hand out water. At some of them they hand out snacks. On this day some volunteers were handing out Vaseline. They do this on sunny days as well, although I hadn’t really noticed it before. It helps with, well, chafing, if that happens to be a problem. I declined the oily goo. Who needs that stuff, I thought.

At the finish line that day I saw a man with a bloody shirt. He hadn’t cut himself. Nothing so easy. The rain had made his shirt wet and his nipples had rubbed against that wet shirt and there were streaks of blood originating from those two points. He had rubbed his nipples raw. That, I remember thinking, looks painful. The thing is, it has since happened to me. Not nearly to that degree, thank Jehovah, but enough that I had to be careful what I wore for a few days. It happened on a rainy day when I was out running for a long time. Kind of like today…

Look, I’m not proud to admit that I have this particular injury here. I can’t say it is embarrassing, exactly, but it does open one up to the possibility of ridicule. Being a tenderfoot is one thing, but a tendernipple? That can’t look good on a resume.

It isn’t all that bad. I’m just a wee bit sore, and I’ll need to be careful what I wear. No heavy duty work shirts on the old bare torso for me. It goes to show how long I have been out of the habit of running. I didn’t even think of the fact that I might run with a wet shirt for, I don’t know, a couple of hours. Sheesh. I’ve got to learn this stuff all over again? I thought I knew how to learn from my mistakes. Apparently not.

I don’t plan to run at all tomorrow. I need a day off and it will give me a chance to heal up, if you know what I’m saying. At least I’m not really injured. I feel pretty dang good, actually. I could run tomorrow if that felt like the right thing to do. As it is, I will stay away from my chosen fitness activity for at least one day. And even if I don’t sleep in later than usual, I may just hang out in pajamas well into the morning. I mean, it will be Sunday, right?

Sore and Glad to be Sore

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Apparently over six feet of snow fell on Bolton Valley over the past week. That is pretty nuts. That is a lot of snow. Their total for the year so far was 272 inches when I checked earlier. When we lived up there we had a few 300-inch years. Those were good years. This one is shaping up to be in the running.

I left later than I wanted this morning but I finally got my gear together and headed up there. I was solo. My wife stayed home with the children while I skied. I was riding the lift about an hour after they opened. Come to think of it, the lift I was riding might have opened a little later than the others, so maybe I was only a half hour behind first tracks, but I did pretty well. There was plenty of untracked powder for me to track up. I only skied for an hour and a half but that was about all I could take.

I would ride up, ski down and hop right back on. No dallying for me. Since I telemark, deep snow means lots of up and down. For someone who has not skied much this winter, it also means sore thighs. I could feel the burn as I hopped and carved. I did stop in the middle of runs more than once, to take a break and catch my breath, but also just to marvel at the snow. It was deep and beautiful and wondrous.

I don’t know how many runs I took. Plenty, I suppose. I got way tired and had lots of fun. Snow that deep feels just plain dreamy. Floating on it feels like flying. I sometimes compare it to whitewater boating. Both offer the sensation of fluid movement, where one feels partly in control and partly in the flow of gravity and the elements. Catching a turn or a wave just right makes me feel a union of sorts with the world.

That is what life is about–the feeling of being so in the moment, feeling so part of your little piece of the world, that all else falls away. Joy, that’s what it is. Call it idealistic if you will, or even foolish, but if you do, I am guessing you have never had the feeling. It can come from other things as well, I am sure.  These are two that I know.

Driving home I could feel my sore muscles with every depression of the clutch. It reminded me that I should get out there more. I should take the time to get out there, and I should make sure my kids get to know that feeling of joy through experience. I am sore, but I hope to get out there again tomorrow. We will take the kids, but we will also get a few runs in ourselves, just to see if there is some powder still to cut up somewhere on the edge of the trail. Maybe I will find a spot tomorrow to ride the fluff again, even for just a few turns.