This post marks the beginning of my running blog, which I am starting because I tweaked my hamstring in a 10-mile race the other day and have taken a few days off running to let it heal properly so that I don't have to take too much more time off. I'll spare you musings on the compulsive tendencies that might require a diary essay (etymologically, no one tires of repeating, a wandering) to substitute for a hilly twelve-mile road run in the late November chill, a more satisfying--and in some ways perhaps even more durable--peregrination.
Inury for me has come to meant giving up on substitions, at least when it comes to injuries of the picayune nagging kind that need about three days to heal up. I chucked cross training a long time ago. There's no use in trying to preserve fitness. I get so bored at the gym. I feel so confined, somehow the sweat feels dirty and muggy, like indoor sweat, not running sweat. When injured now, I just take the time. I eat ice cream, drink beer, imagine my a life without running.
It's a dangerous exercise, imagining life as a non-runner. Injury makes you feel like you could easily lose the habit, and at age 32, I don't feel like I have too many more chances to get fat and get in shape again. My fitness now is too precious; losing it, while it wouldn't mean obesity, would mean phsysical and spiritual puffiness. I'd recede into the corporeal average.
The vanity here isn't exactly about looks but about virtue, about the traits I want a chiseled hollow-cheeked face to reflect to the world: self-control, reliability, formidability. A face that's dependable because it conceals nothing.
