Week 1 Day 2: Whose Genius Idea Was This Anyway?

I fully expected the first day to be the worst. This was incredibly shortsighted and foolish. Today sucked more by a high order of magnitude. Day one was all nerves. Day two? Day two was all pain.

My run was more of a fast shuffle today as the springs were worn and rusty. The thing, whatever it is, that connects my heel assembly to the calve muscle, or maybe that's just more calve muscle, was very sore. It was tight all of yesterday, but I was hoping a good night's sleep would allow it to heal up a bit. Unfortunately I haven't had good sleep recently.

It was hard to tell which part of me was dogging it and why. Was it getting too little sleep every day of the week but one since like, forever? Was it the sore legs? Was it the seams rubbing against raw skin with each step?

The blisters were both not as bad and worse than I expected. I never knew the proper way to deal with blisters was to pop them. I thought they were to be treated as pimples: just let it be. My feet felt much better after I mauled them. I tried popping them Monday night with a needle, but the needle wasn't sharp enough to go through my tough foot skin, so I had to wait around for a pair of sharp scissors to boil. Yeah, you read right, I hacked at my blisters with a pair of nose scissors. Splort!

(Warning, don't read the above while eating. Especially don't read it if you're about to use mustard and that little bit of yellow mustard juice just ran out onto your sandwich because you forgot to shake it enough. Yeah, don't read the above then think about that.)

The blisters on my big toes felt pretty good today. Not peachy keen, but easy enough to ignore. The blisters on the inside arch of my foot, however, were on fire. Friction every step. In the end I couldn't wait to get back home, stretch again, shower, and... go to work. I could have gone right to bed, to be honest.

Thing is, today's run almost didn't happen. To describe it, I wish there were a way to measure discrete amounts of will, and in addition, that there was a way to adequately communicate the experience of having just one little bit of that will left to do a thing. Then giving that up. That's where I was this morning, round about 6:12. I'd woken up at 4 and was awake well past 5, so of course I was good and sleepy when the alarm went off at 6. After snoozing a couple times* I rationalized. I'm really tired, yeah? Like, it's probably unhealthy for me to try to exercise without proper sleep, not to mention running on such stiff legs. Yeah. You can always run tomorrow. Turn off the alarm. Sleep in.

I had that one last atomic bit of that resolve to actually get out of bed, go outside, and do the pain thing. And as my hand was on its way to relieve me of it, my phone's alarm, which I set just in case the regular one isn't getting my attention, went off. I begrudgingly got up.

I still have to say I love the shoes. I wish I were wearing them now, though if I were, I'd be tired of answering questions about them, and I do think my blisters would protest. Also, the morning sky is quite a thing to behold. I only wish it weren't obscured by so much urban muck and that I could actually see a horizon.

Let's see what Friday holds.