2007-03-02

Diminishing returns

It is March and I am running again. I can say 'running' because it has happened twice now. The first time you run after not doing so in a long time is totally dissatisfying. Nothing works as it once did and every movement is pain for days after. This 'reward' does not motivate one to want to run again, or perhaps ever, even knowing that each run will be easier and less painful than the last. In fact, what stands betwixt run one and run two is, psychologically at least, more than a little devastating. You have to wrestle an inner consciousness concerned only with self-preservation into believing that so much pain is actually in your best interest. This of course runs counter to the highly developed and hardwired pain avoidance instinct evolution has tacitly reinforced since the first beginning.

But it is important to torture myself keep running because I am aging. Of this, there is no doubt. 27 may still be young, but the body portion of this equation feels qualitatively separate from everything that came before it. Injuries take longer to heal, belly fat is no longer transient, and fatigue is now visible in the burnish of the skin. Despite its implicit simplicity, getting older is a strange thing to do. And I am getting very good at it.

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