In just a week, the 114th Boston Marathon will take over my city, and I will love it. I, of course, will not be running it for so many reasons, but I'll be thinking of my friends and thousands of strangers who run while I cheer on my Red Sox from nine rows behind home plate with my favorite Yankees fan.

I still can't run. I'm going stir crazy to the point where I see people doing their longish taper runs before the marathon, in last year's blue-and-yellow marathon jackets, and I feel a white-hot stab of jealousy. Yes, jealousy, that in just over a week they'll be slogging out 26.2 miles of sheer soul-soaring agony, and I will be limping from my little red seat to the Fenway Guinness stand and back. This is utter crazyness. It's been three weeks since my last run. I've pushed through some stationary bike rides, and done so many lightweight front squats that my quads were in searing agony until, oh, about now. My brain's been so all over the place that I've actually seriously considered therapy. THERAPY!
Then I read this. Why.Do.I.Keep.Not.Making.This.Connection?
I used to joke, when I got into the whirlwind, honeymoon, holycrapicanreallydothis stage of running, that I did it because 'It's cheaper than therapy'. And yet I constantly have to keep reminding myself how much it really matters. Seriously, proven-research, MATTERS.
On the way home in the car that night, my purple swollen ankle wrapped in ice bags and on my friend's lap in the back seat of the car, I cried not because it hurt so much (it did) but because, as I whispered I have to run. I can't not run.

I'm not a good runner. I'm never going to run a marathon or an 8-minute mile. But, as I said in my last post, I need this. I really need it. I'm a runner, for better or for worse. Sometimes I hate it, but I need it. Especially now, with some of the emotional stressors that are wreaking havoc on my brain. I miss stopping on the causeway at sunset and laughing. Given the way my foot still feels, I don't get the feeling I'll be running for at least another month. I should probably just go to the doctor, but I'm afraid there's not really much that can be done at this point, and I just need to let it heal on its own. I realize I would be extremely bad at being really injured. Maybe I'm afraid of having to get surgery. Maybe I think that if I jut ignore it, it'll eventually heal or go away.
But I can NOT be sedentary. This is the longest I've gone without consistent exercise for the last two years. So I'm heading to the gym today, and hopefully every day this week. I'll report back on the effects of that, which hopefully will not involve reinjury, at the end of the week.