Running Like a Fish

(I know it's not a picture of a pool but it is water.  I wish I could swim in
this water and not be crushed upon the rocks)

Injury always plays a part in our running.  Sometimes serious and sometimes not.  One never quite knows what sort of injury a current situation might be until back running or still sidelined.

And so the pool for me holds with it a certain disdain.

As a child it was an obvious source of fun, wet noodles, and splashing - honestly it still holds these positive emotions when I see a pool.

Then the pool became a playing field when I joined the swimming team from age five to ten or so.  Those were fun times as well, mixed with all sorts of odd memories from freezing cold water to swim meets in bizarre places to a team I barely knew.  Most of these fuzzy remembrances come from being a kid who had to wear super thick glasses so I could see well, and as you may have guessed, once cannot wear such optical aids while in or around the pool - no contacts at this point.  Funny as it is, when I stop to look back on the window into my past on times when I was without glasses, it seems as though I'm looking now without glasses as though the memories themselves are blurred.

It was in college where the pool took on the dark turn of being a place where I had to go to train due to an injuries.  Endless amounts of pool runs can take their toll on the mind.  Even the smell of the pool can in moments conjure up a montage of never ending water workouts.

Regardless, when their is some pain keeping me from the roads I have two choices.  Move to an activity (such as the pool) that does not bother the pain so I can keep some form of cardio fitness, or just become a useless lump of lethargic laziness putting on the pounds.  I am not good at curbing my eating style and end up taking in way too many calories when I'm injured.

(I took this photo from a website - click anywhere on this link.
 It gets at what I'm trying to say for the most part)

Recently a friend from college (Mark McBride) came to visit and he started talking about his Ironman experience.  For some odd reason these conversations were the spark I needed to get me swimming just enough in the pool that I think a childhood switch went off, releasing the idea of the pool as a place of joy back into my heart.  An old home where I suddenly felt much less like a runner trying to swim and more like an old swimmer getting his form back (I'm sure it looked atrocious).

Perhaps it's time for me to learn to love the pool again.  I still yearn the feeling of my feet pounding against the open road, but the run has been rough on the body.  For now I'm a stretching machine with a reborn love for the water surging in my blood - seriously I can't get it out of my ears so I know it's in there. Who knows, this might just be the nudge I needed to get me looking more seriously towards triathlons.

For now I'll be running, but like a fish.