My Achilles Heel

My achilles heel -- the figurative one, not the actual one -- is the rain.

Ever since I started running again, it has been my kryptonite. As a 17-year-old cross country and track runner, I never let anything stop me. I ran in the rain, in major snowstorms. I ran in the remnants of hurricanes that sometimes visited the Jersey Shore. When I was sick and had to stay home, I would run up and down the stairs for as long as I could. Sometimes I would go to the basement, put my hands against the wall or the staircase and run in place as hard as I could.

But those days are behind me.

As a 46-year-old trying to regain my health, I have different rules. I don't run in the rain because it is difficult to see through the raindrops on my glasses. It's a safety issue and to a smaller extent, an annoyance. I didn't used to need my glasses to run, but now I do. If I can't see the traffic and environment around me, I don't feel safe.

If I ran to regain my health and then got run over by a car that I couldn't see in the rain, that would be called an ironic death.

So, anyway. I don't run in the rain.

Remember Labor Day? It rained. I didn't run.

But the next day, Tuesday, ... it rained, and I didn't run.

Wednesday was the first day of school. It rained, and I didn't run.

By Thursday, the region was being inundated with water. The constant rain had filled up rivers and reservoirs. Binghamton was flooded. Broome County was evacuating. Bridges were washed out in Pennsylvania.

I had no idea how bad it was until Jack came back from the bus stop. The bus was late. I told him to go back and wait for it. If it didn't come at all, I would drive him to school.

He came back a little while later and told me someone had driven by and said the school was on two-hour delay.

I checked the TV. WETM had no scroll on the bottom announcing school closings. But then Amy noticed the time it was posting: 5:19 a.m.

They had a technical problem and were re-running the broadcast from earlier in the morning. When we flipped over to WENY, we finally saw the school closings.

So, anyway, on Thursday I didn't run.

By Friday, I had every intention of running, but found that I couldn't. I was tired and unmotivated. My rhythm was thrown off by the rain and the new schedule.

I get up with Jack at 6:30 so that he can catch his bus at 7 a.m. Liam gets up a little later to catch his bus at 7:50. My thought had been to go for my runs after Liam got on his bus, but it didn't work out that way on Friday. I learned that I needed to blend my pre-run routines with the rhythm of getting the kids out the door. I needed to psych myself up for the run.

On Saturday, about a week since my last run, I was determined to have a good workout. I set out to run 48 minutes, and although the 24-minute outward board trip was OK, getting back was another matter.

As I made the turn back onto Oriole Drive, with dogs barking at me on all sides, I just felt all the energy sap out of me. It's happened before, especially after a long lay-off.

Usually what happens is I walk home.

Not this time.

This time, I realized that if I started walking, it would make it harder and take longer to get back to the level I need to be, which is to run for 1-hour, five days a week.

So, I forced myself to keep running. That worked for a while, but then on Wygant, the energy drained out of me again. I lost all momentum and found myself walking.

Fine, I said to myself. Walk for a minute, then run for a minute.

I did, and when I started running again, I told myself that after a minute of running I'll try running two minutes.

After two minutes, I tried for three. I kept going like that. I wasn't going to set a record, but at least I was moving again.

I kept running like that -- except for another very brief stop on Greenridge -- until I got home. I made it in about 50 minutes.

I tried running with the boys, but Liam had some leg pain, so I didn't push him. Jack, however, ran on his own and I think he did a mile in under 11 minutes. I'm not sure because I stopped my watch when Liam stopped and then restarted when I realized Jack didn't have a watch. But it was a good run for him. He's making progress.

Liam seems to be having trouble with foot and leg pain. I suspect it may be because he has the weak ankles and feet that I inherited. I will be teaching him some of my foot therapy exercises to see if that helps.

On Monday, I kept up a good mental focus and psyched myself up to run. I got out and stretched and prepared myself to run a full hour. Unfortunately, when I reached Greenridge Drive, a couple of blocks away, I noticed some knee pain. It didn't go away, so I followed my cardinal rule for running as middle-aged man: When I feel pain, I stop.

Knee pain for me means I need to work on the exercise bike. I admit I didn't do that on my layoff, and I should have. So, I put in about 50 minutes on it Monday morning.

I figured I would have been ready to run today, Tuesday, but Liam is home sick today with a stomach bug. So, I'm staying home, but I plan to try again Wednesday.

So long as I keep trying, I figure I'm doing something right.