Feeling Good

If you are just getting started running, or just getting back into it, a word of warning.  There will come a time in to the not-too-distant future when you will say to yourself, "This running shit isn't so bad.  I could get used to this."  This will occur right about the time your body starts to get used to the abuse to which you subject it on a daily basis.  You may indeed feel this way only a couple days into it.  Do not be fooled; you can trick your body for a couple days, but soon it will discover that what you are doing to it is not all that great and it will rebel.  At this point, no matter how much it sucks, it is imperative that you persevere.  Because it will get better.  But know that you cannot trick your body for very long.  It will soon discover that something strange is going on and it will punish you for it.  My advice...get into it slowly.

All the same, the day will come when it will actually start to seem easy.  You may actually feel great.  Please note that here I am not referring to the mythical 'runner's high' to which many allude and even more aspire.  This does not exist.  Sure, there may be times when the endorphins start flowing and the pain in your legs and lungs diminishes ever-so-slightly, you may even be tempted to pick up your pace a bit.  I  have experienced this; however, as a mind-altering happening, it is somewhat lacking.  For all those fitness nuts nattering on about this mythical occurrence, a couple words, if I may.  Try weed.

Even still, it is possible to turn running into a pleasurable activity.  As your body adjusts to the rigors and you begin to improve your times, you may return from a run feeling better than when you left.  You may, indeed, feel like going back out for more.  You will want to run farther tomorrow than you did today.  This is an incredible sensation; enjoy it.  It may even get to the point where, as you cross the finish line at a race, knowing you just set a PR, probably by quite a bit, you may feel a frisson of electricity, a small shudder, run through your body, not unlike when you reach that most intense of moments.  A tiny little orspasm, if you will.  That will make all the training, all the pain, all the sacrifice worth it.  However, do not get used to this.  Nothing is that good all the time.