Things move forward, and less painfully. Still not running.

Today marks day one of my leg not hurting at all, while walking. This, of course, has suggested to me that I ought to try running on it. See if that hurts. More accurately, see if it hurts enough to cancel out the elation I'd surely get from running a mile, then two, then three, and what the heck, we're rolling now, why not six or seven, why not an even ten?

At my last visit, my doctor congratulated me on being so patient. On letting things heal. On cross training like someone with zero hobbies that are not sweating profusely. 

I told him that I'd not yet been tried. That I hadn't run, because I couldn't. Not without immediate and severe pain. Now, anyone who runs long distances develops a somewhat intimate - if not always affectionate - relationship with pain, and I'm no different. I've run 50 miles on gravel that RDs warn auto drivers against (it tends to slash tires open) and trained through/around a metatarsal stress fracture. 

Not saying I'm an exceptionally "tough guy". In fact, quite average (if that). I'll bitch about the heat and the cold, the mud or the dust. I'll avoid cobwebs and take a different trail if someone reports seeing something that might have been a snake. If it was a copperhead or a rattler? I'm road running for a month.

But pain? Eh, I can deal with that. At least, right up until the point where I can't. This leg business went way past that.

But it's back now. Back on the side of "discomfort" and "annoyance". Back on the side of "I could really run today, right fucking now. I could just lace up and go. Go before my body knows it's supposed to hurt. Don't tell it. Sneak out in the night and return through an open window. Maybe it'll sleep through it."

I know better, of course. But knowing something and acting on it - or not acting, as in this case - are different things, separated by a hulking range of cognitive dissonance.  

I've traversed this particular range, however, and found myself on the side of patience. Of endurance - this thing I supposedly train, and yet lack in so many crucial aspects, always opting instead for immediate, compulsive, gratifying self immolation. 

I feel compelled to say now that, as ever, I do realize the triviality of this, despite my penchant for melodramatic phrasing. 

I get it. Am getting it. As ever.