I’ve never DNFed in a race. DNF stands for Did Not Finish
(not Dinosaur Nose Flipped, which would be sweet. For the record, I’ve never
Dinosaur Nose Flipped in race either). The fact that I haven’t done too many
races, I’m not overly injury-prone and they haven’t been super long anyway
(longest ones have been marathons) probably have something to do with that.
Yesterday morning I nearly DNFed a training run. In fact I nearly
DNSed it (Did Not Start-I’m not sure that’s an official acronym but I’ll go
with that anyway).
I made myself get up early to drive Michelle to work which
is 20 minutes away in Goderich. There are some nice trails around there-many
which I haven’t explored-and thought I’d make use of them before the “real
winter” begins. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a Canadian say
something along the lines of “ah this December snow is nothing eh, wait until
February eh, that’s when it’s actually winter eh”. I’d have at least two dollars. Ok, it’s not
that much, BUT if you take out the exaggerated amount of “ehs” in the sentence,
I’d be filthy rich. Call me crazy, but when it’s below zero, the leaves have
long since fallen from the trees and there is snow covering houses, fields, and
everything else…that IS winter.
So there I was, driving through Goderich to get to a nice
trail north of town. When I pulled up at the ice-covered entrance, the gates
were officially closed for the season, but I could still run the trails if I
wished. Still dressed in my non-running clothes, I stepped out of the car to
inspect the trail. Actually “stepped” isn’t the appropriate word, “glided”
probably would be. And not in the Blades of Glory ice skating graceful meaning,
but in an awkward, new-born-alpaca-trying-to-take-it’s-first-steps-with-rollerskates-attached-to-its-feet
clumsy kind of way. Unfortunately the trail was much the same, and I decided
that since it wasn’t forecast to snow for the next week or so I’d come back to
this one in a few days, hoping some of the ice and snow had melted by then.
I knew I had to run, but also knew there were going to be
worse winter days than this or “real winter” as I’d learned to call it, when I’d
really have to resort to the dreaded treadmill, but I couldn’t bring myself to
that today when there was still blue sky around. I drove to a different trail
in town, a shorter one by the river that is more of a groomed walking path rather
than single-track trail through the woods, in the hope that it wasn’t so icy.
No luck-it was just as bad, as I found out when I exited the car in the same
clumsy rollerskating alpaca fashion as the first time.
After a few minutes sitting in the car thinking about all
the pros and cons of actually running, I turned on the ignition and headed
home. I think every runner/cyclist/swimmer etc has those days when they could
think of every possible excuse not to get on the trail/bike/pool and has talked
themselves out of it. Two sayings that always come back to me in these times
are “you never regret the run you do, but you regret the one’s you don’t do”
and “ ‘I regret that run’-said no-one ever”. I think they are absolutely true.
Unless of course you break an ankle while out for a run, or get run over by an
ice-cream truck, or attacked by a grizzly bear, or...
Ok so there are some regrettable scenarios, but for 99.99%
of runs, no matter how cold, no matter how tired you are, or how much you’re
hurting at that particular point in time, you are going to look back on that
run and be glad/proud/relieved you did it. I never look back on training weeks
and think “gee I really regret going for that run I was dreading”, but I
sometimes find myself looking over shorter training weeks thinking “why didn’t
I just man up and go for a damn run? Now that short week looks weak!” And then
I would probably think about how many words in the English language have the
same sound but different spelling (like read and read-so stupid). But I digress…
It was this mindframe that finally got me to pull the car over
about 10km from home in a relatively ice-free car park off the highway, change
into my layers of running gear and get out of the car. It was cold, it was
still kind of icy and it wasn’t immediately “fun”, but I was running. By the
time I reached the highway (which is terrible for running on in winter
conditions) I turned around and headed back toward the car, making it a super short 4km run and made it back
to my starting point less than 20
minutes later. I had literally spent nearly three times as long driving around,
thinking about it, googling pictures of alpacas with rollerskates and
getting changed than I did actually running, but in the end, I went for a run, and
immediately once I stepped back into the car I was glad I did. Sure I could
have done repeats of that 4km stretch to make it a longer run, but I was claiming
just getting out and getting moving as a victory. I didn’t DNS-which is the
main thing. Looking at it now, it was a measly little run, hardly worth the
drive, it was cold, and it wasn’t exactly overly fun, but I know I’ll look back
on this training week and think about just how ball-bustingly cold it was and
how glad I am that I got out there and did 4km on that Thursday, rather than
0km. In fact, that’s what I think now, at 24 hours later. Do I regret being a big
baby about the weather or complaining about the less than ideal (but still very
runnable) conditions? Kind of, but not really! But that’s beside the point. Do
I regret going for that run? Not at all.
The trail I turned my back on...ice + melting snow + cold = ideal conditions for making a tit out of myself
Among all the pointless crap on the internet, unfortunately a hilarious picture of an alpaca on rollerskates is not one of them. Fortunately, I got my alpaca fix with an even more hilarious photo of an alpaca riding a surfboard. Hahaha AN ALPACA RIDING A SURFBOARD!! Golden.
There was a picture of an elephant on rollerskates (which is pretty neat), but he actually looks way more in control and steady than I was hopping out of the car onto ice.
Found a nice stretch of quiet road with no snow/ice/slush to run on. :)
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