A Slice of Mild Insanity

There is something so cozy about being snuggled up in warm blankets and listening to the wind roar and howl around the house corners outside.  I sit in bed; my knees have a pillow underneath and Ziploc bags full of ice on top. As long as I ice the complaining bits right away after a run the muscles maintain only a low level grumpiness.  If I forget, it turns into flaming rebellion and outright refusal. I’m trying to run a marathon before I turn 50.  This is, I fully admit, a mild insanity brought on by a midlife crisis.  With my parents passing last year I was deluged by helpful reading material, dropped off by well meaning friends and hospice volunteers, about the grieving process.  Grief is, to say the least, not pleasant.  Death sucks.  But I was, despite literate preparation, blindsided by the same emotions I had experienced when I left home as a young adult.  As these were slamming away in my brain I started watching, on the Internet, a man my age, who had never run seriously, run 43 marathons in a row around the UK.  I thought, “If he can do that, I can at least run a mile!”  I was staying at my parent’s house, at 9000 feet.  I went outside, ran ten steps and had to spend twenty minutes catching my breath.  Now I’m up to ten miles, as long as I ice my knees.  So here I sit in bed, wind outside, cozily ignoring mortality and denying age.