When Happiness Slips From Your Hands - Running Withdrawal

To say that running is my everything is a huge understatement.
When the pandemic started, I gradually increased my mileage. Slowly but surely, I was dedicating twenty to twenty five hours of my week to my training. From then on, each morning of mine was filled with a condensed dose of pure bliss. I was riding this wave of luck - no injuries, no nothing, and so I kept on going.

Until. Well until my body shut down on me in mid october. While running for two hours felt like a breeze in september, now I could barely run a half hour without feeling like I was about to collapse. I was now running around to find the cause of this sudden crash. I didn't and still don't have any injuries. Ever since that time, every run would feel like I was running on dead legs, to a point where I could no longer run on pavement, trail only.

Lack of proper nutrients? Could be... But it still feels surreal that this literally happened from one day to the next. 170 km on a crazy good week to less than 10 in a span of a few weeks. I thought that for (once) I was playing it safe not putting happiness into the hands of human beings. Oh boy was I wrong. You can only ride your luck for so long.

Losing my capacity to do what I love most in the world also meant losing what keeps me grounded, what keeps me sane, what keeps me going. It meant being forced to look for other ways to keep myself happy. I have been able to run for 1h30 on a handful of occasions since then, but doing so requires me to push my body in ways that I never had to do before.

Sadly, when you stop running, you regress quickly. Yet I'd do anything to be able to run even just an hour long run without feeling like I'm about to die.