Insane in the brain

Dragging your unresponsive, probably unconscious legs behind you for 13 km is hard work. No matter how beautiful the weather was, how prettily the river was flowing towards the sea, how the air smelled of snow and burning wood, I struggled completely oblivious of my surroundings. The perfect training schedule that I devised in the beginning of the week was already showing its first fault: ”long” runs the day after a double session of strength training and Body Combat is a bit too ambitious. At least right now.

You know how sometimes when you're out running you get lost in your own thoughts and time flies by even though you've been running for hours? Today was not one of those days. Today was ”just one more step, just one more step” the only thought going through my mind. The last kilometre, which included a tiny upwards slope, was run on pure will. I wondered if my body would ever be strong enough to run a marathon again. I wondered if I was pushing it too hard at the gym. I wondered if I wasn't pushing hard enough.

A few minutes after I got home and stretched, I sat at my computer to register the run in my logbook. Behind my computer, a window faces the street behind our house. There I saw a woman jogging leisurely by. Despite the almost debilitating ache in my lower back, the tiredness in my legs, the disappointment in my heart, and despite the fact that I had just run an agonising 13 km, every single moment of which was torture, the only thing I thought about when I saw her was ”I wish I was out running”. 

Doctor, are there any pills for my condition?