After my post-run lobster pot treatment yesterday, I figured today I’d one-up that treatment by doing the ultimate in foot soaking: the beach! I went, not with intentions of lying leisurely, iced tea in hand and book under my nose, but with the intent to heal my leg.
I remember a yoga teacher training I attended in Mexico and for days on end we practiced for hours in a thatched hut right on the beach. One day, about 2 days in, our teacher said after a particularly grueling 3 hour practice, ” Now go out and jump in the ocean!” We all were so tired but he’d ordered us and so off we went. We all ran and jumped in and after a few minutes just started laughing and swimming around. It was one of the most therapeutic, healing soaks I have ever taken. I had that in mind as I walked in the water, sat in the water, read in the water and just stood there. I spent the entire two hours in the water up to my thighs ( this is New England, you know.. only crazy people go all the way in!). After two hours, I must say, my leg felt considerably better.
Now, I only share this because as runners, yoga students and teachers and just all around athletes, we sometimes forget that the most basic of things can heal us. Yoga is perfect example of this. You don’t need anything really, to practice; in our commercialized society we’ve created a perceived need for all sorts of yoga products, but truely you can be on a beach, on the floor anywhere and regardless of what you’re wearing, practice yoga. It’s exercise in it’s purest form. As I was on the beach today, watching kids yelp for joy at the sight of cool shells in the sand, watched people chatting as they strolled, watched babies splash around for the first time in what to them, must seem like the world’s biggest bathtub, I realized we don’t need iphones.. we don’t need ipods, we don’t need Tivo, we don’t need high speed internet. At the end of the day, we only need the sun, the sand, to relax and enjoy the beautiful gifts that are all around us.
Afterwards, I stopped in at a local running store, http://www.nerunningco.com. If you haven’t visited Dave and his knowledge staff, make it a point. They are wonderful and I had another consult about shoes and ended up picking up a replacement pair of Adidas with inserts. This will give me a much more stable pair than the flat Mizunos and give me a good alternate pair to run in.
This week, I’m only scheduling 3 days of short runs to test out the leg. We shall see.