The day I've been dreading for months finally arrived. It was zero fun, but I got through it better than I could have hoped.
My wife left me today. Not for anyone else, just left me because she doesn't want to be married any more. It was not a surprise at all; I've been expecting this since December. The only good thing is that that gave me time to prepare myself emotionally. If she had actually left in December, I'm not sure what I would have done. This way, I've trained for it, just as I train for a marathon. I'm not marathon-ready, psychologically, but I'm probably 10K ready. And that's allowing me to survive.
My strategy at this point is to fight the temptation to crawl back in my cave. Running is going to be a major portion of that. So, at 6:00 tonight, an hour after talking to my therapist, I was at the Fleet Feet store for the Thursday night fun run. And darn if one of the four (yes, four) other runners was the guy who beat me two weeks ago in the Iron Pig. Nice guy, too. He invited me for speed work on Tuesdays and hills on Fridays. Might take him up on it later in the summer. The run wasn't bad; still upper 70s but a bit of a breeze. Should have done the headband and didn't, so I paid for that. It was 4.8, one major downhill/uphill, otherwise flat. Another one of the runners tonight ran Boston in '09, qualified for this year but didn't get entered in time, and will be up there with me in '11.
Pupe wants me to avoid making any major decisions. That's fine. Not interested in major decisions at this point. They're too much effort. Just interested in survival. Talked to T tonight. He's pretty upset too, trying to distract himself so he doesn't think about his parents separating. That makes two of us that are pretty upset. Maybe three, but I'm not ready to go quite that far on the speculation. | 