When You Can’t Run, Write

If you’ve been following Running Buddy over the past few weeks you know that I’ve battled a knee injury since April and have been pursuing a recovery that has kept me out of commission entirely since the beginning of November.  This has been hard on me because I’m usually at my best as a person when I’m running.

Much research has focused on the positive mental, emotional and physical side effects of running, and many runners will tell you that it opens up your mind and clears your thoughts – that it’s a time when you can do your best thinking.  I certainly believe this.  The oft-described “runner’s high” is an endorphin-induced state of joy and feeling of invincibility reached during the middle of a long run that no drug could ever create.

I’m under doctor’s orders not to run, nor to work out until my knee injury progresses.  The side effects of this prohibition on me have been challenging.  I have less energy.  I am not as consistently happy.  I am eating worse than I used to eat.  And I’m motivated less to excel at the things that I do every day.

I’m not in a great place, and I don’t want to stay here.

One of the worst side effects for me is that my injury has stolen my thinking time. On an average day, I have a million thoughts swirling around in my head: “Where am I going to be in one year?” “Should I drive into work today?” “Why is that person looking at me like that?” “I really don’t think there are enough losing adjectives to describe the Lions,” etc. and you get the picture.

Often, the only time I’m able to bring clarity to this amorphous blob of brain waves is when I’m running.  I’m astonished, sometimes, that I’m able to continue putting one foot in front of the other on some of my runs.  Because I kid you not, plans for world domination (okay, perhaps not that ambitious, but you get the idea), have been hatched more than once on one of my loops in many places across the country.  And after my run, I have a clear picture of the road ahead: the next project I want to undertake, my next self-improvement mission, or a solid picture of my one-, two-, or five-year plan.  Or I simply just feel good.

My injury has robbed me of this.

So I’ve been blogging.  It was during one of my runs (before November, when I could still run), in fact, that I decided I wanted to start this blog.  But the motivation to start it didn’t arrive until I found myself not able to run.  And it has proved therapeutic, to a degree.  There is still nothing that compares to the physical and mental release provided by a good run, but when you can’t sort through your thoughts during exercise, doing so in front of a computer (or a notebook, for the old-fashioned types out there) is a great alternative.

In a future post I plan to talk about logging information in general and the fact that we tend to monitor more closely those items that we actively measure (this seems obvious but trust me, there’s merit to the discussion).   One of the positive effects of blogging about my recovery is that I’m becoming even more invested in seeing it through to the finish.   And the thought-sorting that previously took place during my runs now plays itself out in front of a screen (and I’ve found myself writing everywhere – on the bus, on the ferry, in coffee shops, at home, on my BlackBerry waiting for all forms of public transportation, you name it).

So if you’re currently sidelined, unable to run or exercise, I recommend writing down your thoughts. It will get you motivated for the next step on your challenge, give you a record by which you can look back at your progress, and perhaps most importantly, clear some space for the other thoughts that are fighting for some room in your constantly active mind.  You’ll feel much better for it, and at the end of the day, it will make your road to recovery seem just a little bit shorter.

Photo by dbdbrobot.