Recover Well

On a recent Friday morning, my son, nearly two, darted across the kitchen floor towards his father. Always eager to hoist him into the air, I placed my bony hands under his armpits and thrust him towards the ceiling. He delighted in the fanfare and the experience of flying high for a few moments. I, on the other hand, instantly grimaced as a twinge—like a lightning bolt—surged through my lower back. I lowered him to the laminate floor—slowly—in a lunge position. Maybe I thought this stretch I perform before a run might provide some release. Nope. I hobbled around the house for the rest of the day. Counters and couches and furniture and stair rails were a godsend to an aching back.

The irony of that back pain is it kept me from exercising for one day. Twenty-four hours passed without a run or a visit to the local gym to lift weights. “Clear your mind of can’t,” says the English writer Samuel Johnson. “Sit down and rest,” retorted my wise wife. I slept in Saturday morning, slumped in the tub with a generous portion of epsom salts. I also managed to survive an eight-hour work day (at a specialty running store no less) complete with lots of sitting and standing. Getting in and out of the car was a dreadful task as well. But I have to think that actively taking a day off, be it on account of soreness or pure prudence, is a wise choice for me as a husband, father, and athlete. Or in the words of Volt Athletics coach Tyler Koch, “It’s not that most athletes are overtrained, it’s that most athletes are under-recovered.”

As a distance runner, I’m certainly given to overtraining, to putting in the miles when the body asks for rest. I simply think of recovery as the time between a completed run and the start of the next one. Eating tends to fill that time, along with chores around the house. In short, even though the run ends, the motion I put forth into another task persists. And persists. Perhaps it’s no surprise that my legs feel sluggish the next day. “The difference between failure and success lies in the mundane: the day-to-day focus on eating right, sleeping well, and hydrating,” counsels coach Koch. The message is clear when it comes to running well: Recover well.

The injury, though, gives me time to think about why I even run in the first place. Twelve years ago I sought out the means to become more physically active. So, I scooped up a pair of shoes from the bedroom closet and ran around the neighborhood. I felt awful the next day but never looked back.

Nowadays, I wonder if I should re-evaluate my rationale for running. Some are of the belief that distance runners are running away from something. Personal demons, perhaps. A harsh childhood. Addiction. Abuse. Anxiety. Ironically, running is the activity that allows wounded people to find a sense of release and share in the company of others who are navigating the same shit. You might say that running is a form of recovery. 

The recovery is hard, though. And what ultimately gets me is how much that back pain impaired my running. Even after a day off, the next few runs were clunky. I tried not to overcompensate and thus create a new ache, but the rhythm was off. Even the runs with my son in the jogging stroller were off. I cross train to minimize the risk of injury, but all I can do now is laugh that a quick and sudden movement embracing my son wrecked me physically for a few days. Unsurprisingly, as he ages, I too will age. Should he decide to take up running, I’ll do my best to set the pace until the day that I’m the one struggling to keep up.