The good long run

Since May 1st, when I came back to running after two sedentary years due to injuries, because I run solo now now that all my former running buddies have moved away or else spun me out of their lives, I have laid down iron rules for myself about about coming back without injuring myself or getting discouraged because I can't do it and returning to the couch. Basically my plan called for running three times a week starting at half a mile a run and slowly, methodically, bumping up the mileage.

Four months later, now I can make ten miles a week.  My first run back I couldn't run half of half a mile without needing to walk.

This past week I ran three miles each on two runs plus a 3K distance time on a third day to make up for a run I missed earlier in the month due to a sore calf.  But I needed to do my "long" run for the week of four miles.

I decided to have a fun run and do two miles out and two miles back on the flat W&OD Trail and chat up everyone I could.  So many runners these days are in their own cocoon of isolation, fueled by their egos and abetted by their dangling white wires leading to their ear buds, that they don't acknowledge passing runners by returning a wave or answer anything (not even a glance) to a "Good morning."

I fulfilled my wish and had a very relaxed, fun run.  First I stopped at a spot just off the trail where two teen boys were doing watercolors of the trail and spent a couple of minutes talking to them about their landscapes.  Both had portrayed the dramatic sky over the trail in different fashions, one featuring white cumulous clouds against a pale blue sky backdrop and the other painting in the sky in a shifting, competing clash of bluish colors with the clouds in various shades of grey, not stark white structures.  Neither had drawn in any runners on the trail yet so I told them with tongue in cheek that I would pose for them on the trail on my way back but when I returned half an our later they were gone.

Next up was a elderly walker standing by a nearby milepost.  I stopped and asked him how far he was going and he looked at me suspiciously but answered, "A mile.  I am testing my distance recorder and have walked from milepost 8 to milepost 7 but my readout only says .997 of a mile."  He looked dismayed.  I said that the mile markers were known to be slightly off sometimes and it was a mile if he rounded it off.  He was obviously unconvinced.

Next I ran through an Arlington Fire Department Station parking lot on a detour from the trail where they are building an overpass over Route 29 and I encountered an on-duty fireman who was carrying dumbbells across the lot to simulate carrying heavy fire equipment, and I asked him for tips on how to properly lift dumbbells for the maximum effect since I have started doing reps of bicep curls before and after each run.  He gave me some good suggestions and I turned around at the halfway point and headed home, arriving at my house half an hour later after waving hello to everyone I  passed, runners and walkers alike and receiving a wave or greeting back in almost all instances.  I ignored bicyclists as they are all in their own world and never call out "Passing" as required, seeming to delight in whipping around runners as fast and as close and as silently as possible in the interest of startling plodding runners deigning to be in their kingly sphere.

It was a fun run, as I said.  I felt great about it when I finished, the feeling I used to get from running before I fell off the running wagon due to injuries a couple of years ago and got so hideously out of shape.