For the past nineteen years that I have been running and racing, time has been of utmost importance to me. Looking back now, I realize that I had put way too much emphasis on such a trivial thing. After all, did it really matter where I placed in a race? Was there really a necessity to constantly
bore my friends with explicit racing and running details as to just how fast I traversed a pre-determined distance? My guess is - probably not. Time back then was only important to "me" and truthfully, I never really got it. It just didn't matter to anyone else. End of story. Well, perhaps not.The minutes and seconds that I was so often concerned about, have played a little trick on me. The trick is - all added up, those minutes and seconds have aged me. Aged me horribly. Okay, so maybe in years on this earth I am not that old. But time (there's that dirty little word again) and heredity I suppose, have greatly affected my running times.
We need to go back in time to just one year ago. Like now, it was the end of summer. Fall is a great time for running in New York. It offers some of the best scenery, coupled with very manageable temperatures. But last Fall was different for me. It was a time that I noticed that it was becoming more and more painful to get out of bed in the morning. Sore joints and muscles in the evenings followed by excruciating pain in the morning. Within in a few short weeks of the onset of this joint soreness, I found that I was unable to dress myself one morning. Tying my shoes, which I've done most of my life, was now impossible. In fact, I couldn't even reach my phone to call for help.
By mid winter, after numerous doctor visits and blood tests, I was diagnosed first with Rheumatoid Arthritis - an auto-immune disease - and then Lupus. Auto-immune diseases are funny. Not laughable funny, stupid funny. There's a difference. Some days, I felt pretty good and walked like I was well. Other days, without notice, I walked and felt like a ninety two year old man. My running was more or less on hold. I hated the world last winter. I was on numerous medications then, and more than hating the world last winter, I hated ingesting toxic chemicals into my otherwise drug free fifty year old body.
Warm weather appears to be my best friend. I enjoyed a summer filled with running this year. My times - not so good - as in past years. What I enjoyed mostly, was a summer full of pain free and pill free running. That was a gift. A gift that I felt was here to stay. Managing a disease with exercise worked for me - as I had slowly detoxed my body in early spring from the harsh chemicals that I was assured that I needed.
Now however,with the onset of colder weather, I know that my days of pain free running are slowly fading away. I feel it daily. It's inevitable and I'm thinking I'll be slipping once again into that all too familiar pain. My splits have been slowly deteriorating again, and without much doubt, I probably appear to the coherant motorist - you know, the driver who is driving rather than texting or talking - as simply a little old man hobbling along the roadside. But to me, in my mind and my world of running, I'm still the King of the Road.
~Safe Riding~
-The Chief
