Back Together With An Ex-Boyfriend

Have you ever gotten back together with an old boyfriend or girlfriend?  If so, you know how it goes: you’re excited to feel that energy you once had with them, you’re relaxed by how comfortable you are with them, and frankly you’re thrilled that you don’t have to start a relationship from square 1 where you spend that first date wondering what he thinks of you and if his breath is going to stink when you kiss him goodnight.  But shortly after you rekindle the relationship, you remember why it ended in the first place.  He was fun and interesting at first, but after a while he got kind of tedious.  You realized that you had been trying to like him a lot more than you actually did.  And physically it just wasn’t working for you.  Also, the second time around the little personality and behavior quirks that eventually got to you last time are digging into you at a much faster pace this time around.  And no, Dave, if you’re reading this, I’m not talking about you.  OK, I am. And by the way, you were never as funny as I told you that you were.

Well, right now, I’m thinking about all of that.  No, I’m not getting back together with an ex.  I’m somewhere in the middle of a 20 mile run.

Let me explain.  It is 5 weeks away from the NYC Marathon.  My current training plan calls for two 20 mile training runs, and today is the first of them.  Next week my long run is a mere 14 miles, then that second 20 miler pops up again.  After that I get to taper and heal my body as well as I can for 3 weeks before I punish the hell out of it on November 3^rd.

Even though it’s my first of the two 20 mile training runs, it’s not my first time running this distance.  I ran one 20 miler for my marathon in 2011, and there were 3 in my training plan last year.  So, even though it’s been a long time since I’ve run this far, I’ve done it before.  This run and I haven’t seen each other in almost a year, but it’s time to rekindle this relationship.

Since I’ve done this before, I know how long it’s going to take.  I know that I’m going to start in the early morning and since I’m run/walking the whole thing I probably won’t finish until mid-afternoon.  This run is so long that I’m going to miss a meal while I’m in the process of burning about 1700 calories.

I start on my run, and I have to admit that at first it’s pretty exciting.  My run and I are happy to be back together and are enjoying each other’s company. Even though I’m run/walking, my pace is still decent.  The weather is fantastic and the colors of the early fall leaves that I’m passing are beautiful.  I have trained so much that the first 5 miles fly by and I feel like my feet aren’t even touching the ground.

At about mile 6, though, I start remembering why it’s been so long since this length of a run and I were intimate with each other.  It really isn’t as exciting as I thought it was going to be.  I’ve been running for over an hour and I’m only 30% finished.  The water bottles I have strapped to my fuel belt are bothering me.  My first gel tastes awful but I know they are the only thing I’m going to eat all morning.

By mile 9, all of the run's annoying habits are out in the open and bugging the crap out of me.  I'm hungry.  Downhills are starting to hurt as much as uphills. My shirt is rubbing and I’m getting what’s beginning to look like a hickey right at my neckline.  Damned boyfriend.

At mile 10, I realize what a mistake this relationship is.  I have just run 10 entire miles – and I’m only half way done.  All that work I just did has to be done again, but this time on legs that have just run 10 miles.  This sucks.

At mile 13, I think that if I had decided to get into a relationship with a half marathon that I’d basically be done by now and would be home where I would have a wonderful hot shower, eat like a refugee and then maybe even take a nap.  But, no, I decided to go out again with a 20 miler.  I don’t want to be with him anymore, but he’s still here.  And now he’s more annoying.  Sweat is dripping into that cut that I’ve achieved from my shirt and the symbol of the added sting of this relationship is not lost on me.  My pace has slowed tremendously, which means that this run is going to take even longer.  The sun is straight up and it’s about 10 degrees hotter than when I first started and I’m on a stretch of my route that has absolutely no shade.

At mile 14 I try to find an upside and I think “Hey, all that’s left is a 10K!”  And then the next thought in my head is “[Bad word, starts with “F”]! I still have to run a [same bad word, this time ending in ‘ing’] 10K!!”  My legs hurt.  My healed foot is starting to hurt, which is bad.  My lower back is starting to hurt, which is new but also bad. 

I’m done.  I don’t care how far I’ve gotten into this.  This relationship needs to end.  The spark is gone, it hurts too much, and it’s just not worth it.  I don’t care how far I’ve gotten into it.  I’m going to stop and head home.

But, here’s the problem.  I kind of knew I wasn’t going to enjoy this run and even thought I might want to end the relationship early, so I built in a sort of fail-safe.  Instead of running in lots of loops that give me mileage while keeping me close to home, I’ve set up this run as an “out and back” more or less, so if I wanted to quit I’d be as far from home as I had miles left to do.  Even if I wanted to stop I’d still have to do the same mileage, so I might as well run it. 

The guy that all the other ones prepped me for :-)

So, now I was mad at my run and mad at myself.  Why did I get back into this?  What was I thinking?  Didn’t I learn anything the first time?  Then, it hit me.  I’ve learned something in all of my relationships.  With every guy whose heart I’ve broken (at least that’s how we’re writing it here.  Hey, my blog, my rules), I learned something that has made the next relationship better so that it could culminate in me being in a wonderful relationship for 18 years and counting.  If it hadn’t been for Dave, Stephen, Charlie, Lance (umm, no, not Lance.  What a douche) and others I wouldn’t be in the happy place in my life that I’m in now.  And that, I realize, is the purpose of this run.  It’s hard.  It hurts.  It started great, got annoying, and at the end is downright awful.  But it’s supposed to be that way.  All these runs I’ve done on this training plan are prepping me for the perfect relationship – that 26.2 mile run I’m going to do on November 3^rd.

Those last 6 miles take so long that the charge on my watch dies and I have to time the final mile on my iPod (and may God bless modern technology which has a person wearing two timers on themselves at any given moment).  When I get to my house and spend about 5 minutes trying to calculate the physics required to get my completely spent legs up the 23 steps to my front porch, I remember that I’m going to have to do this same run again in just 2 weeks.  I smile and get a little excited at the thought of my next date.