Tales of Danny Boy: Ouch

We here at Blog Central made a sincere promise a while back. We agreed to never again post stories of The Kid. We still plan to stick to our solemn oath; the Kid Chronicles are no more. However, in the spirit of Great Third-Person Literature, we now introduce the Tales of Danny Boy.

“Ouch!” Danny Boy says out loud. It’s 9.3 miles into his 10-mile run. He thinks he may have once again done something pretty darn stupid.

The thing is, running had been improving once again for Danny Boy. To review, a couple months ago, he was ramping up his mileage and his intensity in anticipation of running two and a half marathons this Spring. Then he had his SETBACK. In the ensuing weeks, besides dealing with the intensified Achilles pain, he lost gobs of fitness. Due to that lost fitness, Danny Boy decided to opt-out of Marathon Number One, the Canton Hall of Fame Marathon. But now, over the last couple weeks, he was beginning to feel better again, and was clawing his way back up to 50 miles per week.

Until today.

He hits the road at 4:25 AM, and immediately runs into Neighbor Runner Rita, who is running with her dog. Kind of weird talking with a neighbor at that early hour, but after a few nice words, they each run their separate ways. Danny Boy runs over to the track at his usual easy, slow, loping pace. Once under the fence, however, he lowers the hammer.

 

It turns out that that hammer is not of the sledge variety, but more like a 6-ounce ball pin type. Having run 10-minute miles to get here, he’s now doing four miles at 8:20 or so pace. He supposes that this fast-feeling is sort of like a tempo run, such as it is. This poor excuse for Something of Substance will have to do today. Danny Boy only wants to survive the run without re-injury. He had been thinking that the soft track surface would be good for him. The constant turning may be stressful, but at this extra-slow pace, there shouldn’t be much torque, he thinks.

 

Towards the end of the track run, Danny Boy’s Achilles begins talking to him. “I’m here,” it says. It talks more during the run home, until Danny Boy makes his “Ouch!” exclamation. Danny Boy feels stupid.

 

Maybe it’s not totally dumb. Maybe Danny Boy will easily recover.