A friend of mine says, correctly, that few tales are more boring than those that begin, "My injury...." So I’ll spare you the details of the strained hip flexor that derailed my spring, and pass on observations from one runner’s exile in the aerobic hinterland.

Like all newly injured runners, I was sure that this little flare-up would last two, three days tops, so initially, I wasn’t worried about losing fitness. Still, I couldn’t immediately downshift from 100-mile weeks to Rosannesque inactivity, as much for my head as for my capillary density. First stop: climbing aboard a stair machine twice a day. Yet as fascinating as marching in place inside for 90 minutes a day sounds, it turns out that there are only so many mental time-killing ruses extant in the universe. Within a week, I had effaced them all.

Fortunately, my girlfriend is a competitive cyclist, and with her clothes and counsel, I took a stab at her sport. Being outside on a bike was better, but still as if Keith Richards was told he could have unlimited Bud Light, but nothing else—it takes a lot longer to get the desired effect, and even when you do, it’s, at best, a kissing cousin of the usual high.

Not that cycling is without its advantages. You get to eat before and during a ride, and under those padded shorts, you don’t wear undies. Nonetheless, its negatives are numerous. For one thing, your success is too determined by your equipment. After a few rides, I got cocky enough to join a group of road racers on their long weekend ride. Thing is, I tried to do so on a mountain bike, with thick, knobby tires, while they were on bantam racing bikes. I was dropped after only 12 miles. This just wasn’t right—if you show up for a group long run wearing cotton sweats, you’ll be uncomfortable, but your fitness, not your inadequate gear, will dictate how long you last.

More important, cycling is simply a harder sport than running, at least for those who want to be good. First, it takes significantly more time to train enough to be competitive. Also, because there’s not the pounding, and because you don’t generate as much heat as when running, you can ride above your anaerobic threshold for hour after hour, day after day. We runners get the built-in excuse of more acute fatigue to justify repeated easy days.

And if you think the rest of the mobile world is a hassle when you run, try finding tolerable places to ride for hours at a time. Once you get above 20 MPH, you’re unwelcome anywhere. On roads, you suffer the obloquy of drivers who yell, "Get on the bike path." On bike paths, you’re told—usually by runners—to get on the road or to slow to mesh with the flow of traffic. I knew I had been away from real running for too long when I started complaining about those damn joggers who were always interfering with my cycling.

This was so even though, by then, I was running a token amount on a treadmill, thanks to taking the ultimate plunge of desperation and joining a health club. Now, outsiders think that runners are gleeless drones, so I’m aware that I could be off base in my perceptions of the health club mise en scene; still, I think you’d find more joy in your dentist’s waiting room than at my gym.

After all, here was my stair machine experience writ large: people doing everything possible—reading, watching TV, listening to music, eyeing themselves in the ubiquitous mirrors—to distract themselves from what they were doing. My favorite were those who stare at the display panels of others’ machines, as if when you go to a library, you spend most of your time checking what others are reading. Other than middle-aged men walking, I was the only male who spent more than 10 minutes on cardiovascular equipment, so I received special scrutiny. The main interest of most people there seemed to be running out the clock until a few hundred calories had been burned, so they must have thought that I was that rare species, the anorexic adult man. Why else would I be on the treadmill for more than an hour?

All the more reason to be grateful for the encroaching normality of my running. Sure, as I write this I’m still about 30 miles a week shy of where I want to be, I’m on the bike most days and it will be awhile before I reel off a set of 70-second quarters. And I recognize the possibility that what currently appears an aberration might, years from now, seem the start of a new reality forced on me by aging, much as I now view the first time I passed on sex to get more sleep. For now, though, with a friend coming over tomorrow for a 12-miler on trails, it’s good to be home.


May 2003: Ah, such innocence!

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