6 posts tagged “running”
Y'know, part of the reasons why I've been posting less frequently nowadays has mainly been because of my wireless connection - in short, if I stare at Vox even a tad too long, my laptop develops a hernia, goes into a comatose state and has a sudden relapse into child pornography ( that is to say, the 'create' - page doesn't load).
The problem is that, whenever I get a sudden urge to blog about something meaningful and ( in my mind ludicrously) interesting, Internets says "NO!" and denies me the joy of patting my keyboard until comprehensible words come out. OK, I could just write stuff on Word, but the chance of making an ass of yourself in front of your Internets-peers is something I just happen to live for.
Of course, this isn't always a problem; sometimes the Internets just lets me be like everybody else, content with making my antivirus-program shout "TROJANS" like this was Greece.
Then again, most of the time when it does let me blog, even I tend to have to admit that I don't have anything meaningful to say - at that point in time, that is. Genius just can't be rushed, and stupidity is an acquired art form.
But I do have something meaningful to at least end this post! I ran my first half marathon this spring on Thursday, and I actually didn't end up in one, big, full-body cramp! So I'll have to try harder today and at least rip one muscle/artery apart, otherwise it just won't do!
I probably shouldn't write this down for everyone to see, since some of you'll just end up thinking I'm clinically insane. But more than anything, this one's a little something I needed to jot down for a later myself to read and laugh about.
I've talked about flow before, but yesterday I probably felt the most absolute feeling of flow I've ever felt while out running. With everything having been beating down on me lately, the need to just go out and run has never been so evident.
Yesterday, however, was somewhat... different. I don't know if I pushed myself a bit over the edge on my run, or if I just completely zoned out, but all of a sudden, completely out of breath and having pushed myself close to losing consciousness, I just dropped down on my knees into the snow by the seashore.
On my knees there that night, staring at the clear night sky and the bright blue city lights across the bay, I suddenly just started laughing. Hysterically.
Maybe it was the endorphins talking, the music, maybe the view, maybe everything else, but for a moment everything just felt absolutely beautiful, as if I was high. Of course, it sounds really strange, but right then and there, in a pile of snow I was engulfed in total euphoria and a deep feeling of appreciation for everything. I sat there, fists high up in the air, laughing like a maniac - and if anyone did see me there, they probably wouldn't have thought anything else.
But I didn't really care. Today I woke up to a feeling most closely described as divine, and I hope this feeling takes its time to leave.
And I'm not saying Jimi Hendrix is the Messiah, but right then and there, his music felt like a touch from God.
I'll post something once I'm a bit less insane again.
"Chocolate or jog?"
One of the most annoying moments in my daily life is that one time every few weeks when my brain loops around potential barhopping-nights through integral calculus to my favorite color-palette, only to suddenly stop, not falter mind you, and go
"... well, C or J?"
Seriously, there's nothing more annoying (well ok, I can think of a few things) than eating dinner only to suddenly get the choco-munchies coupled with athlete's anxiety.
But I've actually noticed that there's a correlation with my daily plans and when my brain actually goes "Chocolate. Now". It's actually quite a no-brainer, since the only days when I can't go buy myself a good ol' bar of blue Fazer (it's local, but more often than not I could kill a small, furry animal for it) is when I've actually made myself enough time to have a scheduled jog, but since it doesn't happen every time I go out jogging, I've yet to get used to it. And I looove chocolate.
Which brings forth a dilemma: do I try to kill off my cravings like a Soviet political prisoner (ergo, shot to the back of the neck), or do I simply succumb, like so many others have out of pure convenience and commercial purchasing-power?
'course, I could try to combine the two by jogging to the store and buy me some of the good stuff, but seeing as the nearest store is 500m away and I usually run 20 or more times that distance, it's pretty simple to realize who actually wins in the end.
But what about another store???
Sure, there are other stores, and in fact I could stop at the convenience store on my way back, but there are a few teeny "problems": I dare you to go buy yourself a bar of chocolate while drenched in sweat and wearing an old Karl Kani-sweater you only use for jogging since you wouldn't be caught dead in it otherwise. Either the other customers will think you really need chocolate, are fleeing from the fashion-police or are otherwise just. Plain. [Freaky] Special. And I'm not going to jog around with a bar of chocolate in one hand; the irony is enough to derail a train...
"Chocolate or jog?"
One of the most annoying moments in my daily life is that one time every few weeks when my brain loops around potential barhopping-nights through integral calculus to my favorite color-palette, only to suddenly stop, not falter mind you, and go
"... well, C or J?"
Seriously, there's nothing more annoying (well ok, I can think of a few things) than eating dinner only to suddenly get the choco-munchies coupled with athlete's anxiety.
But I've actually noticed that there's a correlation with my daily plans and when my brain actually goes "Chocolate. Now". It's actually quite a no-brainer, since the only days when I can't go buy myself a good ol' bar of blue Fazer (it's local, but more often than not I could kill a small, furry animal for it) is when I've actually made myself enough time to have a scheduled jog, but since it doesn't happen every time I go out jogging, I've yet to get used to it. And I looove chocolate.
Which brings forth a dilemma: do I try to kill off my cravings like a Soviet political prisoner (ergo, shot to the back of the neck), or do I simply succumb, like so many others have out of pure convenience and commercial purchasing-power?
'course, I could try to combine the two by jogging to the store and buy me some of the good stuff, but seeing as the nearest store is 500m away and I usually run 20 or more times that distance, it's pretty simple to realize who actually wins in the end.
But what about another store???
Sure, there are other stores, and in fact I could stop at the convenience store on my way back, but there are a few teeny "problems": I dare you to go buy yourself a bar of chocolate while drenched in sweat and wearing an old Karl Kani-sweater you only use for jogging since you wouldn't be caught dead in it otherwise. Either the other customers will think you really need chocolate, have some type of hygiene-problem or are otherwise just freaky. And I'm not going to jog around with a bar of chocolate in one hand; the irony is enough to derail a train...
Bad knees seem to run in the family, and a very personal affliction of mine I thought long gone has reared it's ugly head once again (I used to call him Ron).
I used to have a very weak right knee a few years back in my kung fu-heyday (yes, "I know kung fu"; it's not funny anymore, so shove it), but once I stopped, it got all better. Back then it used to like asphalt about as much as Nazis liked Jews, but nowadays it sucks the stuff up like a vacuum.
Until Monday.
Since my latest craze has been jogging in weather-conditions most people would call nuclear winter (we call it thawish), I've been inflicting things much worse than simply asphalt upon my moveppendages, and my knees were taking it quite nicely. But then, as I mentioned, Monday hit.
Snap, Crackle and Pop had nothing to do with it; their second cousins twice removed Slip, Twitch and Dislocate, however, might have had their fingers in the whole mess.
One short jog, one false step and one knee the size of Charlie Sheen's balls later I am now contemplating on simply finding a syringe and stabbing it through muscle, marrow and bone just to suck out all of the pain infesting my kneecap. That, or doing the previous with a syringe filled with morphine or your anestethic/joyride of choice. The pain isn't your average shooting or reverberating pain, it's just a bitch of a pain. And not the nice kind of bitch that you end up marrying and having short but heated arguments with over the color of the drapes; more so the kind that comes PMS:ing at you with an over-sized butcher's knife and you end up locking in the closet just to have enough time to call the paramedics. To put it in nerdy-terms, it megahurtz. It hurts to sit, to stand, to pee to walk; hell, to everything. And it doesn't really help that work involves heavy lifting and lots of walking up and down flights of stairs (surprisingly, down is more painful than up). But to hell with it, it's Thursday, meaning I only have to endure one more day of worked until I can get plastered and try to forget the pain.
And it's not like being coked up for one more day can have any difference anymore - I've been going on codeine-class painkillers since Tuesday and they still let me drive all day long! (Ok, not telling them about the meds may have something to do with it, but they can suck it; I like driving cranes.)
I've noticed over the years that, whenever I'm stressed out, I start exercising relentlessly, and since I've been stressing out about getting/not having a job, I once again started another exercise-a-thon right after coming out of the army. Every spare moment I have goes to doing all kinds of cardio- and fitnessthingies, just to get my mind off of things. I also happen to be one of the crazies my sister writes about because jogging has become a near-fanatic thing for me lately.
This is the point where I should be telling myself that the temperature averages around a constant -10ºC and that I shouldn't be out jogging in a snowstorm. Nevertheless, this is what I've been doing.
You have to understand that, even though sane/foreign people wouldn't go jogging out there to save their life (did I mention the ice?), jogging seems to have misplaced itself next to my bathroom-selector in my brain: when you gotta go, you got to go!
Perhaps it's just the jogging, or perhaps it's the mind-numbing cold, but running around for an hour in midwinter has a wonderfully "emptying" mental effect. Even my usual existential crises have been averted simply by getting my "flow" on. And the wonderful thing is, my flow-feeling's started sticking on to me and staying with me even after I've stopped my jog for the day.
I don't really know what it is with running; ever since I was really tiny (let's add "young" as well, since I was still "tiny" five years ago) and we'd drive past a field, I got this immense urge to get out of the car and just go running up and down that field. Even as I've gotten older, every now and then, when I've felt really aggravated or stressed out, I've simply put on my shoes, gone outside and started running down the street. A couple of blocks later and I just feel more in toon with my inner "flow" again, y'know?
But like I said, I don't know if it's just the jogging in itself, the surroundings or the idea of "running 'til your heart stops" that makes people get their flow on, but sometimes the only thing that really helps is running really fast. And emptying your brain out on the dirt-track really gets you in tune with yourself. And an empty brain means there's more room to be creative.
But let's de-zen this post for now. I got a job.
