T-minus seven days and counting ...You can’t cheat running. It’s not a team sport. Oh sure, you can run with others and try to share the experience, but it is a solitary activity.
You – and only you – put one foot in front of the other as quickly as you can, for as long as you can. When you’re too tired, physically or mentally, you stop. Then you try again.
And again. This is running; this is training.
Falmouth beckons. There is no turning back now.
Liftoff of the 37th annual CIGNA Falmouth Road Race is only a week away. Next Sunday morning I will be at the drawbridge in Woods Hole. This is the fourth of a monthlong diary revisiting a yearlong journey that will lead me to the starting line – not as a reporter, but as a runner – for the first time since 1980.
As winter blended into spring, I was training regularly at my gym, the Fitness 500 Club in Hyannis. I was running about four times a week on a treadmill, clicking off three- and four-milers, occasionally stretching things out to five, or even six.
I was in a good rhythm. I had balance in my life, juggling work, family and friends. My weight was in the mid-180s – down from 230 – and I was, well, feeling cocky. There was more to do, but this was only March. I was ahead of the game.
And then I got injured.
Flushed with confidence, with a heavy dose of stupidity, I attacked the treadmill one Friday morning. I did my usual warm-up routine of five minutes on a stationary bike, some stretching and then began to run. And run. And run some more.
Read more of a weekly series by Sports Editor Bill Higgins leading up to the Falmouth Road Race on Sunday, Aug. 9
Our picture above shows 2008 winners: Men's champion Tadese Tola of Ethiopia, right, and women's overall and master's winner Edith Masai of Kenya.
ShareThis