Wisdom through Acceptance
As we age, we ideally gain wisdom. The Oxford dictionary suggests wisdom is the “soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, and good judgment.”
Wouldn’t we like to think our older selves have learned from experience what has worked, what hasn’t, and be able to discern the why for each, leading to choices with reasonably good outcomes?
In any event, I’m feeling tested in the first part of 2024 as it relates to my training. All started out well enough and then two weeks in I had my second bout with Covid. The first was in April, 2022, likely from which I had total sudden hearing loss. I now have hearing aids that shift sound intended for my deaf left ear over to my right ear. At that time, I likely came back to intense training too quickly and while the specialists will not confirm this, the fact that I lost my hearing 20 minutes after completing a track workout suggests a link between the virus and my inner ear.
This time I was determined to be more cautious – no way was I going to have total hearing loss! Yet, we runners always try to push the envelope. And this bout was much more mild than the first. Very little coughing, no fever, mostly just head congestion and sneezing. Without meds, symptoms mostly cleared in about four days and after a couple days of walking, I did some short runs and within 10 days was back to easy training. Then I had elective surgery for a lipoma on my neck. To allow for healing and minimize scarring my surgeon said to take it easy for a week. Once again, that led to easy workouts. On top of this, I’ve been serving as finance director for a local mayoral campaign, not something I’ve done before, and the flurry of activity has cut into restful sleep.
But the racing season was about to begin. The Super Sunday 4 Miler on February 11th, was the first Grand Prix race. My 70s team was just three deep so we were all needed. I throttled my expectations, got a couple up-tempo workouts in with a long run of seven miles. I drove down to New Hampshire with two others the morning of the race, ran respectably, contributing to a team win. All good.
But that afternoon after getting home and preparing to watch the Super Bowl, the wheels simply fell off. Around 5 p.m., I started feeling nauseous, went up to lay down but shortly was making multiple trips to the bathroom for high velocity vomits. Aching all over, I can’t recall when last feeling so sick. Had no interest in the Super Bowl – didn’t know until morning how it came out. While I first thought it was food poisoning, it was almost certainly the flu, since my partner Liz caught it a day later, no doubt from me. And to top that off, we were scheduled to fly to Austin in two days to visit Liz’s daughter. This was touch and go. While I was now able to stomach food Liz was not and was possibly contagious. What to do? With all arrangements made and hard to change we decided to go. It’s gone as well as expected. We’re both operating at ~80% but seem to be making progress. I’ve run 5 miles the past three days and hopefully tomorrow before leaving will run 9 miles in 60-degree weather, something we will not see in Vermont for a while!
Looking out, the New Bedford Half Marathon is four weeks away and I hope to do long runs of 9, 10, and 12 leading up to that, with enough time for recovery. Not as much training as hoped and the prudent thing is to adjust expectations and use that race and the 15K 13 days later to build toward a strong base for later races. The goal is to be in pretty good shape by mid-May, the one year anniversary of my PRP injection and the road back from a torn hamstring tendon.
We’ve all heard the rather tired adage: “Life happens when we’re busy making plans.” But it does pretty well describe what most of us face at various times during a year on top of the Big Granddaddy of them all – aging. Ultimately, it comes down to accepting what is on our plate and finding constructive ways to address that. The best outcome is we learn something from the experience and come through stronger. Maybe applying some of that valuable wisdom we’ve presumably acquired along the way!