The Thighs Have It

Okay, okay. I can already hear the multiple choruses of "I told you so" ringing out across the urban streetscape of Brooklyn and wafting in through my front window (or maybe it's just all the car alarms). Cowed and humbled after my defiant (though, in retrospect, conterproductive) tour of Canarsie yesterday, I'm taking at least another day off since, well, since my legs hurt an awful lot and I'm more or less teetering on the verge of physical exhaustion. I know, running 40 miles a week shouldn't leave an otherwise healthy person feeling like this. But I'm really coming to believe (and I've said this before) that I probably hurt myself a while back and just never let myself fully recover. It's not like I don't want to be healthy or pain-free (really, I'd love it!), but when I look at the "big map" and see how much of Brooklyn is left to do... well, I just feel like I ought to be out there making some headway instead of sitting at my desk complaining about how tired I am.

I may take tomorrow off, too -- it'll totally depend on how I feel when I get up. In the meantime, I'll take today to try to write some, and keep off the legs as much as I can. Quads (unlike heels or knees, say) tend to heal up pretty quickly, so I'm optimistic. And it looks like we might actually be receiving some more fall-like weather (after a week of rain, mugginess, and highs in the 60s), which will no doubt help as well. So stay tuned.

I really think I understand now why most pro athletes retire by the age of 40 (and why someone like the Mets' Julio Franco -- who turned 48 this past August -- is so remarkable). My weary frame is definitely feeling the effects of time, and in a way that it didn't even two or three years ago. What a drag it is getting old, indeed.

Oh, and in the "yikes" department, a bystander was fatally shot in the Rockaway Parkway L train station in Canarsie yesterday afternoon, only a few short hours after I had passed through on my way home from running there. More here.

A bonus photo from the Runs Brooklyn archives:


Church on 65th Street in Dyker Heights