Running as Catharsis II

I spent a little over two hours in the dentist’s chair yesterday afternoon getting a bad filling repaired. They numbed me up, but I could still hear and feel the drilling, the polishing, the picking and pulling. I was all puffy and drooling for the whole afternoon, swallowed most of my sushi lunch whole because I couldn’t chew. But the dentist wasn’t even the worst part of my day.

That honor goes to the meeting I was called into as soon as I returned to the office. I can’t go into details beyond saying that it was really bad news.

It was almost seven o’clock before I was able to throw on my running gear and head home. I have never been so anxious to get out and hit the streets. I dodged back and forth between the bus lane and overly crowded 5th Avenue sidewalk, making it up to Central Park in record time.

I forced myself to slow down after reaching the outer loop and even got passed without letting it bother me. I was a little sore from Wednesday’s tough 12, and didn’t want to push too hard. But as I went on, the thoughts floating around in my head wore me down and I gave in. Every mile was a little faster than the one before it.

By mile 10, I was running under 6:30s.

It helped.

Sometimes I wonder how people can not run.

p.s. The II in the title is because I did this once before. Well, I’ve done this many times before. But wrote about it once before using the same title I wanted to use tonight.