I won’t be able to participate in the Wrigley River Run this year
which falls on June 2 because I have to work on my birthday. Instead, this post
is about last week’s run.
If you have been reading this blog for
awhile, you might have seen a post or two about my dizziness problems. If you
haven’t, well that’s okay. I have labyrinthitis, an inner ear problem which
causes dizziness and hits me from time to time for no apparent reason. Saturday
morning was one of those days. I drove to the AREC run not knowing how that was
going to affect my running later. Not only that, I was nursing a slight right
calf discomfort which I was hoping wouldn’t get worse if I ran slowly enough.
When I got to the location, I noticed that there were a lot more people than in
previous weeks and that was because the athletes from Train 4 Autism (a fund
raising group) had joined the fray. They sure had some nice looking baby blue
uniforms. I hazard to guess that there were at least 150 runners that morning.
After a very brief talk by Nadine, we
were off. I was really apprehensive about my dizziness so I just kept pace with
the 12 minute milers hoping I wouldn’t topple over. Within the first half mile,
I noticed that some of the mentors of Train 4 Autism were pretty speedy. They
zipped past us in their baby blues. Their group was nice enough to mark the
course with blue and yellow markers on traffic cones indicating which way the
half marathoners or full marathoners have to go. I ran with Rosie and Tina up
to the 3 mile water station and when we resumed, I got to talking with Mark F.
I didn’t know that he had stopped running for a year and he recently just started
again because of another mid life crisis. He did not elaborate and I did not
probe. He suddenly asked me how long my every day running streak lasted before
I had to quit. I didn’t even know he knew about that. He was guessing a
thousand days and I told him it was actually 21 years and 8 days. He said, no
wonder my ankle tendons were shot. We had a quick laugh about that. Incidentally,
someone asked me this question the previous week: What was the minimum
number of miles you ran when you had your 21 year running every day streak? The
requirement of the running streak association which I’m not a member of is one
mile, so to simplify, that is what I would say my minimum was even though it
was more like 1 ½ miles. Anyway, back to the run. Mark then regaled me
with stories of his trail running races and how one time he and another friend
of ours – Roberta, finished last at a very technical (i.e. rocky terrain)
Colorado trail race. He pulled me for about a mile and a half, then for some
reason, I pulled ahead and caught up with who I think were mother and daughter
experimenting with the Galloway 5 minute run to 1 minute walk system. I asked
them if they were with AREC and we ran together for the next mile. With half a
mile left, I attempted to run with a full stride. Not my natural gait, mind
you, to protect my ankle tendons, but at least a semblance of a full stride.
And I resisted to do a full out sprint in the last 200 meters, also for ankle
protection reasons. I hardly noticed that by the time I finished 6 miles or so,
my dizziness had dissipated. Running had calmed my inner ear.
Hopefully in the coming weeks we could
mingle with the Train 4 Autism runners and get to know them better instead of
sticking to our packs and them in theirs during the run. They seem like a
pretty good group. Thanks for running with us Train 4 Autism athletes J
Public comments below, private comments: E-mail Me!
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