For the next two years, anytime the weather permitted it, I would walk my local tech park. Rebuilding the stamina in my legs had taken time, but it had been worth it. My left thigh, which had atrophied from the knee surgery that removed the tissue that the Lyme disease had damaged, had built back the muscle that it had lost.
In 2021, I had still been a little cautious, building up to the full four mile walk of the tech park once the weather had gotten warm again, but by 2022, I was just going for the full distance. The mileage didn’t phase me anymore. It was like I was back to normal.
Except for the running. But it turned out, that was just due to a lack of trying. And that was soon put to the test.
It was a Sunday in autumn, most likely September, but maybe early October. It was still nice enough to walk, even at eight in the morning (I was still able to somewhat sleep in on weekends at that point). I was nearly halfway through the walk – which was only about a little over a mile away because my route wound in on itself a few times – when I got a call asking me where I was.
And that’s when I remembered I’d been asked by my mom if I could dog sit for them while they went to church. My mom had remarried, and her poor husband was standing outside my house with their dog, seeing my car was in the driveway but not being able to get inside.
As I apologized for forgetting about dog sitting, and letting him know how he could get into the house, I made a split decision. He was in the choir and only had twenty minutes to get to church. He’d been expecting to just be able to drop off the dog and go. I couldn’t keep him waiting for me to walk back to the house.
For the first time in 5 years, I ran.
And it was ugly. I got winded within minutes. My legs got sore from the exertion. My muscles were probably wondering what the hell I was doing. I tried to jog at a gradual pace, and still had to stop twice and restart again at an even slower speed.
I got back to my house in about 15 minutes. My pace when I had been running long distances had been about 10 minutes, and was about 9 when I was pushing myself for speed. My hopes to have picked up where my running had left off years ago had been dashed. It felt like I could’ve gotten there just as quickly if I’d walked the whole way back.
Or so I thought.
When I got to my house to take the dog, my mom’s husband gave me a look of surprise. “That was fast,” he said. He didn’t even ask if I’d run. He was shocked when I’d told him I had. It was pretty clear he’d ruled that out as a possibility after the last 5 years. I know I had after just trying it.
But his reaction got me thinking. I clearly hadn’t taken as long to “rush” back as I’d thought. What was more, I immediately took the dog for a walk that combined with the one I’d aborted, got me to around the 4 mile distance I typically walked. And the most important thing was, even as bad as the run had gone, there were no aches and pains, no soreness. I’d come out of the run just fine.
It was this impromptu run to get back to my house to dog sit like I’d promised that made me pose the question to myself:
Were my running days not really behind me?