The cut of your shorts and the length of its inseam...

I finally got around to unpacking some of my stuff after moving home half a month ago (for the summer after the end of the spring semester). I have an entire pile of folded running splits on the shelf in the corner that I've yet to touch. If I had been home, I wouldn't have touched them in months...probably since that "fateful day" that the bone "gave" and I limped back to my car.

Anyway, even on my easy runs, I've been wearing a longer pair of running shorts--black, red accents, 7 in inseam. I don't feel right wearing "real running shorts" unless I'm training at the volume and with the intensity that would characterize me--in my view even if not others perhaps--as a "real runner." I guess I'm still just f---ing around trying to get back at this point. Maybe there's something more profound that I'm missing in this, or that I simply don't have the time to investigate as I'm about to slip out the door presently.

Maybe I'll come back to it later if I feel the need, desire, or urge...

Life goes on...

Its been a few days (a week or so?) since I posted my initial blog entry. That evening I came to terms with some sense of its pointlessness. No one's going to read it, no one's going to be even aware of its existence. Were someone to stumble onto it, I can just hear the exclamation, "What the hell? Who is this? Who are you to think that whatever content you hope to generate should be worth the time of any other?" Of course, there are plenty of blogs of non-elite runners/riders/triathletes--some of which I frequent even simply for the entertaining and authentic nature of their content--and yet I'm not sure what I expect of this. I guess I'll let myself continue to ramble, and, because no one is there to read that which I'm rambling, it doesn't matter one way or the other.

I'm frequently left with the desire to write something--really just to b!itch about life and how unfair it seems at times ( I know, this is a played subject and no one, assuming I had readers, would be hearing anything original)--first thing in the morning. If not first thing, then after I've gotten a cup of coffee, added a touch of sweetener, having just about drained it (the proverbial one-fifth full--ever the optimist), and am looking forward to that which is coming next. That which is "coming next" is invariably my workout. I'm an athlete even if I'm on the shelf at present. Ya, I know, I mentioned in my last entry that I was beginning again. I was. And now I'm resting it. I ran for a few days off and on...and then got a twinge in my foot. Saw the PT, said it was a little tendonitis, would have me keep running were not it so near the just-since-healed stress fracture. So I'm taking a few days off. Its killing me, but what else is there? It doesn't seem to be improving much so I may just start running on it a bit at some point soon. It will either get better eventually or irritate and re-aggravate the sfx. I think I can stop before doing any damage--it wasn't pulling on the fibula or causing any soreness in that region anyway--and if I do, I guess I can write off cross, probably my college running career, as a wash, and move on. I don't know if I can sit on it though, to much longer.

I guess that the first entry of a new blog should be a philosophical self-examination of why it is the author feels compelled to wax poetic--or to helplessly try to do so--in such a public setting. I've read plenty of the excuses and feigned justifications. Some assert that "there seems to be a general interest in what I'm doing," "this is a space for me to vent or let off steam as much as anything," or that "it's merely an avenue to organize some facet of my life, a setting in which I can declare my goals or intentions and find that the accountability offered by viewers will offer some additional motivation."

Obviously, despite the fact that I've put these "statements" in quotations, they are neither word for word nor meant to be attributed to specific individuals. I feel, personally, that some are more valid than others, though that's not necessarily criticism or endorsement. I don't actually know many (if any) of the people whose blogs I frequent. I'm not going to offer some pretentious judgment, asserting that some are more genuine than others in narrative, expression of internal dialogue and feeling, or motive for writing. I can look at myself alone and question my reasons for so doing. Moreover, I'm not going to act as though authenticity in this setting is a moral imperative and that lack thereof constitutes a personal/character flaw (though I intend to express myself genuinely--this isn't some facebook or twitter post written with the intention of inducing others to respond).

Which brings me to my personal motive for choosing to express myself in a public setting.

I'll begin by stating that I have serious doubts that anyone will actually read this. At present I have little worth saying. Though most of that which I write here will be related to running, racing, and training, I'm sure the other aspects of my life will seep into the fold. That's probably, beyond simply "to be expected," predictably understandable and even fitting. Running is just an aspect of my life, but it is a huge aspect just the same, one about which I'm probably as passionate about at this point of my life as any, and one that offers glimpses of what it is "to truly feel 'alive' in the moment" which I find myself longing to occasionally share.

Which brings me to the next. This is to be taken with the above assertion that I highly doubt I'll end up with much, if any, real viewership. Over the last several years, even if most strongly during that last eight months or so, I find myself given to expression. I'll be running along or in the midst of something--driving, deferring a homework assignment, drifting through a shift at work--and find the trail of thought that I'm following somewhat worth documenting. Maybe the experience is worth preserving. Maybe it is a glimpse of experience that I simply feel compelled to document. "I was a writer in my former life." I find that urge simply to document the present that it might be at a downtrodden later point something to which I might return. I've always done this in spiral notebooks. Where inspiration would hit, I'd stop and jot a few notes to which to return and expand upon later; maybe I'd naw on it, turn the thread of conception over in my mind until I find the opportunity to scribble those prompts to which to return. But the content itself would either be buried anonymously in random notebooks, or would fail to come to fruition--'what is the point if it will never again see the light of day?' So maybe in a sense, that distant and unlikely possibility that the occasional entry carries the possibility of being viewed will motivate me to spin theoretically, wax poetically, or allude to the ethic of experience in the present, where the inclination or urge to do so should strike.

I guess that my reason for doing this is vague and, probably, evolving. Even so, why not?

So I'm coming off a three month layoff necessitated by a fibular stress fracture in my left ankle. It'll probably be a while before I have to much that is actually worth documenting in the physically experiential sense. We'll see what comes up between now and then.