Swimming may be just what the doctor ordered, but this land-lubbing Peg Leg sure wishes the doctor had ordered some muddy, mountainous trails. Swimming is not the torture I thought it would be, but I am not efficient enough to get an amazing workout and my Peg Leg feels really strange flapping around free of das boot for an hour.
Swimming is clean (you can’t even feel that you are sweating), safe (no coyotes, mountain lions, big rocks, snakes or cliffs)…and oh, so, repetitive. I am definitely a dirty girl. This Peg Leg likes a dripping sweat, dirt crusted up my shins, an empty water bottle, a gut-wrenching grind up a big hill, a coyote spotting, a few deer or even a big snake. I’ll take the swimming if that’s all I get, but my heart and soul are not in it.
Worse yet, swimming is a solitary endeavor. I don’t have little ducky friends who want to swim with me and I doubt there would be much socializing between laps. I miss my 2-5 hour runs with buddies. You learn a lot about a friend when you are tromping along together, undistracted for hours at a time. You become very close and you count on those hours together. My running buddies are some of my closest confidants. I share more with them, and know more about them, than some of my friends I see on a daily basis. The motion, the exertion, the commitment loosens the legs and frees the mind and heart, and we share. I miss these times. When we have hours upon hours together, undistracted, we have time to come full-circle…to finish conversations, to follow-up on the unfinished ones, to just listen.
I am now three weeks post-op and I am feeling so far removed from my daily hours on the trails that when I think about running it feels almost dream like. I used to feel like I never saw anyone running around town, and certainly not on the trails. Now, I feel like everywhere das boot and I go, there are people running. Is this just a bad dream or is the lack of endorphins getting to me? I will come full circle, I will get out of the pool and I will hit the trails. Until then,
Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
Happy trails to you, keep smilin’ until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we’re together?
Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you, ’till we meet again.
bossybostwick 