Читать книгу Depression Hates a Moving Target - Nita Sweeney - Страница 13
ОглавлениеShortly after I met Ed, he asked if I wanted to learn to meditate. He’d learned at ten-day Zen retreats before we met. He also did Tai Chi.
Ed set the microwave timer for five minutes. We sat on the stiff dining room chairs I rarely used, and I did my best to focus on my breath.
“My mind races,” I said, fidgeting.
“Sit still and focus. It will slow down on its own.”
Over the next two decades, I built up to long periods of sitting, in much the same way as I was now acclimating to running. I’d been a regular meditator for nearly twenty years and experienced much of the calm and concentration Ed had promised.
After I began running, a colleague told me about ChiRunning. The word “chi” means “life force.” ChiRunning founder Danny Dreyer used Tai Chi principles to create the technique “to reduce injury and improve personal performance…to help you love running forever.” The Eastern philosophy interwoven in the technique aligned with my practice.
I mostly hoped ChiRunning would prevent my ankle from swelling, so I set aside my fear of being seen and took a ChiRunning class with instructor Doug Dapo and two other women students. We spent four hours in a Westerville park, more time than I’d spent outside in years. I learned the hazards of over-striding, the benefits of midfoot landing, and the advantages of “minimalist shoes.” The highly cushioned shoes I’d bought might contribute to my ankle problems. I also learned to use a metronome to increase my foot turnover. I went home and ordered the DVD, a metronome, and an audio recording to hear Danny’s instructions as I ran.
Doug videotaped us before and after and played back the recordings to compare. I’d known my exercise bra was old, and looser since I’d lost weight, but until I watched a video showing my flopping breasts, I hadn’t fully appreciated a good sports bra.
I asked the women Penguins and my running friends for recommendations and researched online. At the store, I tried the brand most recommended, but it had so many hooks and eyes in front that I lost track when I tried to count. I wanted to love it but couldn’t get it on. I bought a different one with adjustable straps. It allowed me to breathe but held things in place.
I immediately implemented Doug’s suggestion that each run have a “form focus.” I often chose “pelvic tilt” because I needed so much improvement in that area. Having a “focus” reminded me of the “object of meditation” one chooses in sitting practice. Each time I ran, if my mind wandered, I brought it back to whatever focus I had chosen for that run, the same way I did while meditating.
***
As I completed weeks five and six of the interval training, my left ankle, the same ankle that swelled in 2008 when I’d tried to run in sandals, grew stiff and swollen around the bone. Back then, I’d attributed it to weight and bad shoes. I now had good shoes and was ten pounds lighter. I shouldn’t be jogging at all.
This left ankle never bent the way the right one did. It was larger, and my left toes often cramped. I rested two days and the swelling subsided. But after the next workout, it swelled again. I massaged, iced, and elevated. A normal person might have called a doctor, but I come from a long line of folks who distrust traditional medicine.
In July, on a trip to San Antonio for a convention, Ed and I walked the downtown and River Walk. My ankle had swollen on the plane. The next morning, it was still swollen. I went to the gym to walk on the treadmill. Despite my usual aversion to them, I climbed aboard one and lost myself in the expansive view of the city from the windows. Sturdy and quiet, the treadmill whirred as I ran much further and faster than the training plan said. I climbed off, dizzy and in pain. My ankle throbbed. When we flew on to Cancun a few days later, it swelled more. A massage and a wrap at the spa reduced the swelling, but it didn’t go down completely until, back home, I’d rested for a few days. I took an entire week off to ice and elevate it. Again, I worried my jogging days were over.
With the swelling gone, I restarted the training plan at week two, alternating ninety seconds of running with two minutes of walking for twenty minutes. The next day, manic, I ran thirty minutes straight. My ankle ballooned.
***
During July and into early August, when my ankle continued to swell, I called the doctor. Sitting on her examining table, I proclaimed how much I loved “running.” The Penguins suggested I call it that instead of “jogging.”
I hoped my enthusiasm would spill over to my doctor, but she frowned at my swollen ankle. It wasn’t that swollen, the size of a tennis ball instead of a softball. But it was tender near the ankle bone. I worried I’d go home in the boot of shame.
I asked the doctor about gout. People from the farmlands of rural Ohio, where I grew up, blamed gout when their ankles swelled. Maybe a dietary change would ward off the swelling. Gout seemed preferable to an injury, but the doctor shook her head and ordered blood tests. It took the nurse three stabs.
The doctor returned and said she would test for autoimmune issues. An alarm went off in my head.
“Autoimmune issues?” I asked, feeling even more lightheaded than I had when the nurse was drawing blood.
“Yes, RA.”
“Like arthritis?”
“Yes. You haven’t fallen, tripped, or done anything else to sprain it.”
I had not.
A woman I knew in college had rheumatoid arthritis. I remembered her swollen joints, low energy level, and pain. Tears stung my eyes.
“It might explain your tiredness and depression too.”
No one else had tested me for RA. Maybe there were treatments. Maybe she was wrong. I left the office with an upset stomach and a still-swollen ankle.
***
After that visit to my primary care physician, I modified the training plan to my ability and continued running intervals: run for ten, walk for one, run for ten again. I still hadn’t signed up for the 5k.
When my ankle swelled, I assumed I would never run again and grew despondent. After a few days of rest, gentle massage, icing and elevating, the swelling went down and hope returned. Then I would run again. This was the cycle. Run. Swell. Sulk. Ice. Walk. Run. Swell. Sulk. Ice. Walk. Mood swings were my norm, but now they were tied to exercise.
I doubted running would permanently heal my depression, but I craved the runner’s rush. In the hours following a run, my arms and legs tingled. My chest and throat opened. The dark heaviness lifted, and my body felt light and warm like an afterglow.
According to a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, running triggers endocannabinoids, the neurotransmitters stimulated by marijuana. A later study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirmed this. With runner’s high, the world is fine. Everybody loves me. I understand everything. My heart is full. Sound like any drugs you’ve ever taken? Exactly! That’s how I felt, even if I only ran a mile.
I didn’t know this science then. Only later would I discover additional science to explain why I was happy when I did my workout and sad when I didn’t. My tricky mind continued to tell me I would fail. Each time I achieved a goal, I reminded it that, once again, it didn’t know what it was talking about. I began to keep an online running journal and felt another rush when I wrote it down.
Meanwhile, my sister continued to ask me about the 5k.
The next time Mr. Dawg and I ran, when I asked him about the 5k, he perked his copper-colored ears. It’s possible he mistook the word “race” for “treat,” but I took it as another sign. So what if I came in last? So what if people laughed? So what!
I went home to sign up, but found the website difficult to navigate. Now that I’d changed my mind about racing and the dog had given his approval, the Universe wasn’t letting me. Apparently, the dog had been wrong.
I went into the bedroom Ed uses as an office and told him I couldn’t sign up. He hugged me and said, “You’ll figure it out.” After twenty years of my mental trials, he’d learned not to fix me. He asked if I’d emailed the race director. I had.
The next day, the race director and I exchanged more emails. Hours passed. When I finally received a confirmation email, I wrapped my arms around Mr. Dawg and thanked Jamey.
***
In August, I graduated from my trusty kitchen timer to a Timex sports watch. At the running store, a young man showed me the options. There were also GPS watches that track pace, route, and heart rate. I didn’t think I needed that much information. He asked about my running and I was embarrassed because of my short mileage, assuming everyone there ran marathons. But he said it was great that I ran at all. I left the store with the watch and another pair of socks because, well, I love socks. And I felt fabulous, like an athlete.
I timed my runs and included the data online, after changing the training schedule to make the intervals easier to track. I’d had a similar watch years before but had killed it in salt water. I’d not replaced it because I wasn’t an athlete anymore, and only athletes wore watches like that. Replacing the sports watch was another step in claiming myself as a runner. I vote with my feet by running, but also by where I spend money. I had now spent more on running in a few months than I’d spent on nearly anything in several years.
I ran with the watch for a few weeks before complaining on social media that waiting for Mr. Dawg to pee and poop made my times slower. My friend Wendy, a writer and ultrarunner from Colorado, posted that I could start and stop the watch with the push of a button. Amazing!
***
When Ed told a woman in our book club I was running, she suggested Born to Run. “I never thought I’d like a book about running.” She said it read like a novel.
I checked the audiobook out of the library and listened in my car. This nonfiction mystery, thriller, and running encyclopedia rolled into one so enthralled me that I’d sit in the garage (with the car off) to listen to the end of a section. It wasn’t lost on me that, decades before, I’d sat in a different car in a different garage, trying to summon the courage to kill myself. While those thoughts sometimes still floated through my mind, they no longer threatened to become reality.
In the book, author Chris McDougall sets out on a quest to find ultrarunner Caballo Blanco and the Tarahumara tribe of Mexican Indians, interspersing facts about evolution and the human body. As ChiRunning claimed, McDougall found heel-striking and over-striding harmful. McDougall also touted the benefits of chia seeds and eating salad for breakfast. Most important, he claimed human beings are genetically engineered to run.
I was most influenced by Caballo Blanco’s instruction to McDougall:
Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you’ve practiced that so long that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one—you get those three, and you’ll be fast.
The book fueled my determination to not let my ankle keep me from running. I’d already experienced what Christopher McDougall described and wanted more. I wanted to run longer distances faster. It helped me mentally prepare for the upcoming 5k.
***
From Born to Run, I also learned the history of the running shoe industry. Maybe the shoe industry didn’t change models each year to get people to buy multiple pairs in fear of their favorite going out of style, but that was the result. They designed those cushioned, high-heeled running shoes to compensate for heel-striking. Perhaps changing my form and running in minimal shoes would cure my wonky ankle.
The Penguins suggested water shoes, the slip-ons made for water aerobics. Cheaper than trendy minimalist shoes, they were as minimal as you could get without going barefoot. I began to run in those one day a week and walk in them other days, but they quickly wore out. At the sporting goods store, where I went for a sturdier pair, the clerk gaped when I told him I intended to run in them. I explained about the Tarahumara Indians and the research to support minimalist shoes. He shook his head but sold them to me anyway.
***
In the ChiRunning class, Doug explained foot turnover. The average runner’s foot turnover is around 150 footfalls per minute. An elite runner’s is closer to 180. When a woman asked if that was why elite runners were so much faster, he said yes, but “not for the reason you might think.” He showed how his foot turnover stayed the same no matter his pace. “Elites are more efficient.” Having your foot on the ground for a shorter period of time uses less energy and is less jarring.
Doug suggested using a metronome to determine our current foot turnover rate and pointed to the small model clipped to his waistband. We were to turn the metronome one beat higher than our current rate and run at that for a week. Once that felt comfortable, we would turn the metronome a beat higher. Gradually increasing the footfalls per minute would not shock our systems, training us to run at a faster cadence with minimal stress. “Gradual progress” is one of the main principles of ChiRunning.
If there’s anything I love, it’s a good gadget. Like the kitchen timer, the metronome was familiar and friendly. I’d used a much larger one in high school when I played flute. “Beep. Beep. Beep,” went the clip-on model, keeping time with Doug’s footfalls.
I ordered a gray metronome, less intimidating than black. If they’d had a rhinestone “Hello Kitty” one, I’d have bought that.
Once it came, I clipped it to my waist and leashed up the dog. Again, that old fear of what people thought surfaced, so Mr. Dawg and I jogged to the ravine, where I hoped no one would hear me beeping. Ridiculous, but I didn’t entirely believe no one was watching.
In the ravine, the dog tugged when I stopped, but I had to read the instructions. He found a shrub to pee on and a tantalizing scent in the mud. After staring at the contraption, I figured out the volume, mode, and speed. I jogged with my finger on the speed button, and the dog followed. As I jogged, I pushed the button to sync with my footfalls. The number was 153, the cadence of an average jogger.
Doug had used a three-beat rhythm like a waltz: left, two, three, right, two, three, left, two, three. Setting it to beat on each footfall was too fast, but using every other step sometimes resulted in hitting too hard repeatedly on the same foot. I divided my number of footfalls, 153, by three, which equaled fifty-one. In keeping with Doug’s gradual progress admonition, I set it for fifty-two, and jogged down the road. Since “more” is always better, part of me wanted to jump to fifty-three. But I remembered “gradual progress.” We would take it slow. It was almost time for the 5k.
