When 45 minutes at 5AM is unbearable because the sun isn't quite up, streets are blocked and smelling of the night before and your Garmin wont find the damn satellites fast enough; when 4 miles turns into 6 at race pace up the steady incline on Spruce Street with your stride, steady and pulse calm; and especially when 8.2 miles takes you across the Ben Franklin Bridge at 8AM with 70 degrees and sunny straight ahead of you, clouds parting, I think of Coach Dale's finest moment:
"There is a tradition in tournament play - to not talk about the next step until you've climbed the one in front of you. I'm sure going to the state finals is beyond your wildest dreams, so let's just keep it right there."
It is during a "good" run, that it's easy to love this sport. On such a run, confidence is tangible as is your unbroken spirit and momentum. It is a "bad" run, though, that solidifies a runner's wherewithal. Those runs when cramps creep in, poor hydration pulls you down and lack of rest reminds you that 20 was ten years ago, are those that take an athlete and make her a runner. Those runs that end in only a repetition of footsteps and "left, right, left, right" repeated out loud may beat me up but no longer break me down.
When I left physical therapy for my new training schedule, I was running 5 blocks, stretching longer than it took to run that half mile, dealing with an amount of pain I was certain would never let up and wondering whether I would ever truly return to this sport. All the while, the Broad Street Run was 5 months away and there were several steps yet to climb.
Looking back, this road was more about my mental toughness than my knee. As it always is with an injury, the comeback is uncertain and the guarantees, slight. What I know for sure is, with 6 days until my first 10 mile run back, I'm tougher than I was last May and I have no regrets about the way I got here.
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