Seasoned runners are very in tune with their bodies. When I began distance running, I ignored my body's warning signs and sought instead to push my body to its outer limits. There are numerable benefits to pushing the body. The endorphin rush is always worth the trouble of the extra miles. The additional burned calories makes the size 6 blue jeans a reality. The extra time spent on the path means less time working and dealing with life's stress. The more time I run, the more I can escape. There are no people to spoil a good path while running. Because I prefer to run alone, the solitude shelters me from outside noise. Bills must be paid and clients tended to and children nurtured, all of which disappears on the path. It is just me and the path.
Positive enticements notwithstanding, there is a bad side to running in excess with no regard for physical limits: the body will break down. Once I began to realize the bad side of running, I began the journey toward recovery.
A runner who is not in recovery is not a runner in the true sense of the word. He or she is instead a person whose legs are moving to the beat of gratification. This will make for an injured runner. This will make for a broken runner. This will make a non-runner, in the end.
There are many ways to recover from a long run. STEP 1 of recovery for the body is knowing when the body needs a break, while realizing that the runner inside would never stop running if allowed by custom, convention, and physicality.
STEP 2 to recovery from the long run is stopping the run so that recovery can take place. This requires a belief that stopping the run will restore the body. The Runner Within will bargain with the mind. It will rationalize and plead to remain on the path for long periods, every day. Recovery requires restoration of the body and that means stopping the run.
STEP 3 requires for the avid runner to be realistic about the length and type of recovery warranted. Sometimes this requires that the runner surrender to the advice of the greater runner (for there is always a greater runner). Sometimes it requires simply to trust the higher instinct which knows the body's limits. Many times it requires pain as a reminder of the limit.
STEP 4 of recovery would have the runner take an inventory of the body and its aches, to better assess the length and type of recovery needed. This must be an honest assessment, which is not easy for the one who longs for the path.
At some point, the runner may have to admit to another runner or to a physician the exact nature of the bodily limitation which makes recovery important. Often times the runner will hide from herself the reality of the body, which makes understanding and naming the problem critical. A runner who accomplishes this task has gained STEP 5.
The runner must be prepared to have the body fully recovered. This means that there must be a true desire for bodily healing which outweighs the instant urge to run. When that true desire materializes, the runner has made it to STEP 6.
STEP 7 requires humility from the runner because the runner must understand the body's limits in order to remove the body's shortcomings on the long run. Humility is centered on the possibility that the runner cannot control all that the body is, and therefore may need to rely upon outsiders, or minimally, upon a rest from the path.
While resting, the runner should take an inventory of why the body broke down and understand how to avoid this in the future. STEP 8 is not difficult because often times the injured runner has no choice but to inventory, because a run is not possible. The runner must be able to understand how the body was harmed by the run and be willing to make amends to the body.
When possible, the runner should directly address the body's needs, unless doing so would cause the body more harm than good. STEP 9 would not have the runner binge on food, alcohol, drugs or cigarettes while trying to recover the body. Rather, the runner should care for the body while at rest so that the run may return in full.
Many runners never make it to STEP 10, which requires that the runner take a continued inventory of the body and its limits and act promptly to prevent abusing the body on the path. This is because many runners, once healed, gorge on the run and ignore the body's warnings until the runner is thrown back to the beginning.
The fortunate runner will pray and meditate to improve his or her contact with the body. This means that the runner, after recovery, will realize that the run is one long recovery for the soul and for the body. The oneness of the attention to the body's limits when placed with mindfulness of thought and soul is the center of STEP 11.
Finally, the runner who understands recovery of the body can and should carry that message to other runners, through both word and deed. STEP 12 feeds the body because it causes the runner to remember, through example, the body's limits.
And now it is time for my "midnight" run...
No comments:
Post a Comment