The 'Adjustment Period' of Running.
The way I see it, running is like the opposite of a relationship. When you start out with a new partner, you enter the honeymoon period filled with love and excitement and immediately get rose coloured glasses firmly planted over your eyes. It seems like everything is blissfully perfect, until somewhere along the path cracks start to show. With running on the other hand, there's no way around the fact that in many ways the start sucks. Not only is breathing scarily difficult, sweat more abundant, and heart rates sky high; but you get to become reacquainted with the pain of muscles microtearing and fixing themselves on a daily basis. For me, this has meant waking up being unable to walk without the pressure and pain in my calves forcing me into a robot shuffle for the first 5 minutes of the day. Navigating stairs has once again become a mission of sweet talking my quads and hamstrings into moving as they are designed to, and I am drop-dead tired most nights.
That first run back after injury.
The first 30 seconds felt like I was a baby girraffe taking my first steps, and at least in my mind must have looked like it. Then, with each successive 30 second run I found my stride, grew in confidence, and by the third rep the tears were coming. I was running. After 105 days without one of the things I love most in life, I was back. The walks became me just trying to compose myself between bouts of running, and I knew I was getting faster and faster but I was so, damn, happy. Nothing was hurting. Despite the foreigness of it all again, I felt strong, and capable. Everything I love about the movement was reawakening in me.