Last night I could barely walk. Foot pain. Left heel. Why? Not sure.
Some of you know I represented the United States at the 2009 Masters Track & Field World Championships in Lahti, Finland. The first week of August seems like so long ago, when in fact, it wasn’t. Since then, I’ve completely tapered off on training. Completely.
So why the pain?
What is amazing to me, and something I tried to hide in the Lane 8 blog posts before traveling to Finland, is that I was actually able to compete at all.
“Then why put yourself through all this”?, is a common question. Roger Bannister, the first human to break the four-minute mile barrier, said it best:
“I sometimes think that running has given me a glimpse of the greatest freedom a man can ever know, because it results in the simultaneous liberation of both the mind and body….. The runner does not know how or why he runs. He only knows that he must run….. We run, not because it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves”. — Roger Bannister 1956
