Resurfacing

Man, it's been way too long since I've typed anything in this text box.

I was trying to think about why I went from weekly updates to nothing for months and I could only think of one explanation:

Running is boring.

When I was training for the triathlon, I loved every minute of it. With three sports a week, I never had a chance to get bored. And all the natural cross-training meant that I stayed in good health, got well-conditioned, and was able to see progress in at least one of those three sports once a week.

Training for this half-marathon has been exactly the opposite. There's not much to update on because all I've been doing is running. I look on my training plan and I see strength training, run, cross train, run, run runrunrun.

At first, it was really fun. But then when I got past 5 miles, I learned something new: Running for a long while is really boring. Before, I'd never really been conditioned enough to get bored; I was focused only on not dying. But now, it just gets kinda tedioius.

And then there's the pain. My body, people, my body is not made for running. That's the only conclusion I can come to. Because once I got past 4 miles, every time I run, it hurts. My hips hurt, my knees hurt, my shins hurt, my ankles hurt. I have to have ice and warm baths and stretching for days and still, I hobble around all the time.

The tedium and the pain have conspired with my work schedule to make me miss about 30 percent of my training runs. I just don't want to do it and so, I haven't.

Which means I've got a half-marathon coming in less than a month for which I am not prepared at all.

And rather than try to cause myself more pain trying to catch up, I'm going to swallow my pride and give up.

So yeah, I'm not training anymore. I feel kind of like a failure. But the number one reason I work out is because it's fun and it feels good and I look forward to it. And I realized last week that none of those things applied to my current training.

I'll still go running. And I still want to run a marathon someday. I just need to take it more slowly and I need to have someone take a serious look and my biomechanics, because I don't want to end up hurting myself to do something that isn't that fun anyway.

And I've really, really been missing my bike.

Anyway, that's where my head is at. I'm not really sure what comes next. I'd like to do another triathlon next year, but I need to decide what that will be and figure out an off-season training plan.

But the honest truth is that a big part of me is looking forward to spending some time on the elliptical machine with a People magazine.