Today’s run: 2.23 miles, 30:14 minutes. Ran in flurries with the kind of cold that grips your throat. After three weeks of reading paleo blogs to convince myself not to eat grain, I also brainwashed myself against steady-state cardio, so this run was actually sprints mixed with walk intervals.

The fact that I’m agnostic, borderline atheist, didn’t stop me from being moved and impressed with the sermon my parents’ Episcopal priest offered up at Christmas eve services. She lead with a story about a Florida newspaper creating two front pages on Christmas day: one that was entirely heartwarming personal interest stories, and one that had all the bad news – a stabbing in Chicago, rebel violence in the Congo.

She appreciated that cultural impulse of the holidays – to push aside anything negative and pretend the world is only love, peace, and familial cheer. But, she said, the Christian in her was offended.

She walked us through Luke’s description of Jesus’ birth, with some comic annotation: “’Mary pondered,’ Luke tells us. My thoughts would be similarly inappropriate for print if I was sitting in a pile of hay with my new son and a bunch of weird shepherds.”

The point, however, was that there was nothing magical, warm or fuzzy about the events surrounding Jesus’ birth. Mary and Joseph were trekking to Bethlehem not to visit with family or eat marshmallow-topped yams – they were going by decree to have their heads counted in the Roman census. There was nowhere to stay, they were hot and miserable and shacked up with sheep and strangers to birth a baby that may not have seemed like a happy surprise.

And yet, in all this, was the awareness of a sacred moment.  The shepherds wouldn’t shut up about the angels, and on some level, Mary was aware that this baby was more than merely her firstborn. This was something more.

The sermon was a gentle suggestion that we shouldn’t neglect our spirit the rest of the year, amid bills and responsibilities and calamities. (The priest spoke of God’s light, but let that stand for beauty, nature, humanity, as you please.) Celebrate the divine – or at least hold a space for it – even on days that are dark or dim. Life’s gifts always come squeezed in between life’s sorrows.

A good thought as we head into the New Year, no?

Today’s run: .25 miles. 30 degrees.

Today was two weeks to the day since my calf decided to mutiny, and I really thought I was ready. No swelling this a.m., and no pain for days, other than the very occasional twinge and some tightness.

So I squeezed into my Underarmor compression top and tights, threw on a hoodie and a hat, and started down the steps, feeling exactly like an encased sausage (sausages have feelings too!)  but also kind of safe. Sudden flashback to my ex-boyfriend’s friend’s girlfriend, a professional dominatrix, explaining to me that the turn-on of “full rubber” is a feeling of all-emcompassing safety. NOW I think I get it!

Or maybe not, because sex was the last thing on my mind as I trudged down the steps, and, by the third floor, was feeling a familiar pain in my upper Achilles tendon. (Ultimately I think it was the tendon, not the Gastronemius.) I ran a block. Every footstep hurt, say a 4 out of 10. I walked the final three blocks, feeling defeated but also impressed that many tortured hours in online shopping had yielded an outfit that was keeping me warm in 30 degree weather with wind.

So, looks like I’m playing the waiting game some more. I think I better start going to yoga, because otherwise I’m in danger of slipping into total inactivity. I stopped eating bread, so I’m not gaining weight, but I don’t want to lose all my powers.

Illustration Courtesy of RachellAnnMiller.com

”…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

I haven’t run for almost a week now – by far the longest I’ve gone without running in 2010.

After a rigorous self-diagnosis, involving a lot of googling, poking, prodding, and other experimentation, I’ve concluded that I have a Grade-2 calf muscle strain. Not exactly sure whether it’s the Achilles tendon, the soleus, or the gastroenemius, because the pain is exactly where the three meet. Pain ranges from acute to a dull ache, depending on how still I’m being, and the swelling was pretty gross for a couple of days.

Anyway, the punishment for a Grade 2 strain is two weeks of rest; I’m not supposed to run (or do anything really) until the muscle feels 100% better, which is supposed to take a week or two. I’m seeing progress already – swelling is down, the nature of the pain/soreness changing.

This is bad, very bad for the 1000 mile year! Once again, a moment of hubris: I never saw this coming. I thought my own laziness might sink me. Never really thought an injury would.

But let’s see what happens… in the meantime, for coffee tawk: How does one get a calf muscle to heal while living in a 5th floor walkup and commuting by subway and foot to work? Inactivity isn’t really an option.

Today’s run: 4.69 miles, 46:30 minutes. YT: 834.83. Great energy despite general lack of sleep this week.

 A little more of a mile of this was on the track, stopping every loop to do pushups, squats, and some side stretches on the damp fake grass of the soccer field. Love the sprint intervals combined with strength training - makes it easier for me to push myself and feel like I got a really well-rounded workout.

Meanwhile, rough day at work. I gave 100% effort and still wasn’t satisfied with the result. At least I had the memory of a great run – and the lingering calm of it - to make me feel better.