Addiction

Today was the first day I went running this week. I couldn't believe how strong I felt... like I could run - fast - for hours. I've been working a lot this week, and it's actually felt really great. I finally got clearance for my research (barely in the nick of time, since we have to present our qualifying paper research to the whole department on Monday...) so I've been at the preschool every day this week, running my speech perception experiment with little kids. They are so gosh darned cute. Some of them are so focused on the task and they try really really really hard to do a good job. Some of them couldn't care less and they just want to jabber and jabber. This one little girl told me, "I have a cat! She's like a grandma cat! Except she didn't have any babies." I took that to mean her cat was old. And then I tried to get her to listen to some more sounds. :)

Anyway, running. So I've been leaving the house around 8:00 this week, and getting home around 6:30 or 7:00, and that's a lot of working for me. (I have to say "for me", because of course Roger works way more than that, so it's all relative.) I can normally do at least some of my reading at home, so it feels less like work, but this week being out and about all day, and running back and forth between the preschool and my classes, and trying to keep 4-year-olds on task for several hours at a time has been exhausting and exhilarating all at once. It's been really fun, and I'm kind of looking forward to my presentation on Monday (after I put a few more hours' work into it). But running, running... I just haven't been getting up early enough to do it. I think it's great timing though, because I just realized today that it's only been a month since my marathon, so I should still be taking it somewhat easy anyway. The training rule of thumb is to take it easy for about as many days as miles in your last race - so for a 26.2 mile race, you should take it easy for about 26 days afterward. I think I took 4 days completely off after my race, and then I started going for easy runs again, and I felt totally fine, but I dunno, maybe a little tired. I think I had a little less spring in my step, but it was only really noticeable on the hills.

So today I headed up into the hills for a good, solid 7 mile run, at a good little clip, with my sweet dogs in tow. Poor guys have been home alone a lot this week, and only getting one decent walk a day, when I get home in the evening. They were so happy to be out running today. Just smiling and tilting their heads back like they were riding in a car with their heads out the window. I hadn't done a good Berkeley hills run in a while, so we went way up into the hills, around this gorgeous, wooded park with trails and trees and a creek. It rained last night, but the sun was coming out this morning, and Northern California in the winter is so green and lush, so the sun was streaming through the trees and the little rain drops falling off of the leaves were catching little glints of light and just sparkling as they fell to the ground. It was gorgeous, and so peaceful, and I just felt so good. Then we came downhill a little bit and went by Indian Rock Park, this big boulder with a little park area around it, and the view of the Bay literally stopped me in my tracks. I stopped, and stood, and looked, and breathed in the cold fall air, and I almost started crying, to tell you the truth. Here's an idea of what it looked like, poached from Google images:

As I stood there, perfectly still with nothing but the sound of my own breathing and the breeze rustling the leaves, I realized my whole body was just buzzing. I have no other way of describing it... I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and felt this strange, zen, buzzing calmness. I was so completely in the moment, and all I could feel was the chilly air and this very low key humming sensation just emanating from inside me. I know this sounds completely weird, but it was just... warmth, and light, and peace, and calmness, and like nothing else in the whole world mattered except that moment. I just looked down at the Bay, and looked at my dogs looking down at the Bay, like they too could stand there peacefully forever, and I was overwhelmed with the wonderfulness of being alive.

When I took off again, I realized that the buzzing sensation had to be my body's response to not running for a week and then suddenly getting hit with the endorphins of going for a long-ish, hard-ish run. I've talked before about how I feel sluggish if I don't run for a few days in a row, but if it goes longer than a few days, the sluggishness mostly goes away and I feel pretty normal. So from this strange slightly otherworldly experience, I think I must conclude that I am physically addicted to running. I've noticed it before, but today I think was the most extreme instantiation of it. I think I trained hard enough for long enough that I got really used to having that regular rush of endorphins, and then I suddenly took long enough off that I had minor withdrawal (in the form of sluggishness) for a few days before I readjusted, and then bounding up into the hills today must have made the normal endorphin rush much more potent than usual. Jeez, who needs drugs when you can go running?

Okay, it is noon and I need to take a shower and go by the grocery store and make some food for a pre-Thanksgiving potluck tonight. And I should probably crunch some numbers and work on my presentation for Monday. So that's all for now, but I'll do my best to write again soon, even though the semester is going to be somewhat insane from here on out...