A Common Thread

   As I have flitted about from running blog to running blog the last few weeks, it's slowly become apparent to me that there are concurrent themes at play in almost all of them. To me, there is one theme that seems central.
  
We hurt.
   
We may or may not be hurting right now, or we may remember a hurt which we cannot psychologically quite shake, or we may be terrified of it hurting again in the not-too-distant future.

   Even if there is no actual, diagnosable injury with which we must deal,the very act of engaging in this activity will eventually lead pain our way. We start each run knowing it is coming and almost knowing when.
   I am so used to weaving my own painful tale of woe and following, with interest and concern, other peoples' similar tales that the novelty of what we do gets sometimes lost.
   How many other endeavours worthy of blogdom, apart from maybe medical or other sports, have actual physical pain as such an interwoven thread? I have friends who write music and knitting blogs and there is no talk of pain. Not too many arts or business blogs deal with it, either.
   Not only do we all seem to have physical pain as some kind of visitor now and again, we also find that running can numb or relieve some of the emotional or psychological aches which may have beset us. How many times do we read that running got one of us through a difficult or traumatic period in their lives?

   Yesterday, at the end of my run, I was totally exhausted. My lungs hurt and my knees and legs ached. Crossing my chosen finish line, I might well have collapsed, were I not on pavement. All this to simply run about thirty seconds faster than the last time. Tomorrow, I know that to run even a few seconds faster, the pain will be at the very least the same, if not even worse.
   And I will happily set out.