Running, Addiction, Tolerance, Withdrawal

At a certain point I transitioned from running as a way to stay in relatively decent shape and get outdoors when the weather was nice to being a runner. I think I can pinpoint it, in fact, to a rainy day shortly before Thanksgiving of 2009, when I registered for my first half marathon and immediately - even though the race wasn't for another 6 months - wondered what the hell I'd gotten myself into.

Put it this way. Before that 2009-10 season, I actually took winters off.

That's when "running" became "training." But this is in most ways a good thing. It's good to have at least one thing in my life, other than work, that I feel like I'm doing to the hilt. And it's good to have purpose when you lace up your shoes and track your intended route online and start stretching on the front porch. And the whole "staying in shape and enjoying being outside" part sticks around.

But funny things start to happen. Distances that once seemed like major accomplishments are suddenly referred to as "my short run." The first time I ever logged 5 whole miles, I was in 6th grade. One sunny spring afternoon, I ran 8 laps around what my family termed "the long block" - a neighborhoody loop of .6 miles that happened to be contiguous with my paper route - plus a single lap around the self-explanatory "short block." The sense of achievement that accompanied this run was enormous, and right up until 3 years ago, a 5 mile run was basically the gold standard of a difficult workout. I could do it, but man oh man, I would sleep like a baby that night and be stiff as an old man the next morning.

When running turns into training, suddenly it's "Hmm, I have 45 minutes before I need to get ready for work. Guess I'll get 5 miles in."

And while it's surely a sign of ever-increasing endurance, strength, and drive, it's also kind of frustrating to not feel like you put in a solid effort if your day's mileage is anything less than 15.

Another issue is that having to stop running can produce physical and mental reactions that are, from what I've seen in mainstream movies and filmstrips from the D.A.R.E. era, not unlike withdrawal from hard drugs. I had to skip 4 solid days of training after spraining my ankle (to be fair, I thought I was going to miss a full week), and by Day 2 I was all but throwing things at the wall. I intensely envied every runner I saw on the sidewalk, whether he or she was out for a languid jog or performing the telltale acceleration from race-pace to sprint that suggests a fartleking* distance runner.

But so the point is that it wasn't just me fretting about lost training time. There's something more. The body actually becomes accustomed to the strenuous effort required to run multiple miles. The brain - and distance running is hugely psychological - begins to wonder why it isn't getting the dopamine rush that comes with a late-run speed kick or the mild runner's highs that ebb and flow on lucky days. Favorite high-energy songs suddenly seem bland when they're accompanying a drive to the grocery store instead of a nasty uphill at mile 12. I have no data or scientific background to offer this claim as anything but anecdotal. But when I can't run, even though I know logically that a few days rest is actually good for my training and that aggravating a sprained ankle will only make it worse, the irrational, id-driven, let's-have-ice-cream-for-dinner, immediate gratification-seeking voice - the Me Me Me that precedes the civilized human - wants only to run, shaky ankle notwithstanding. This kind of obsessive tendency could have worse objects, like, say, actual drugs. But it seems to work in the same way.


*Yes, this is a thing, albeit an unfortunately-named thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fartlek