Yoga Pants Life

I must confess, I’m taking the Dodger’s heartbreaking World Series loss way harder than I should. I’ve always been a fan of the Dodgers – I can remember going to games as a kid and I went to many games over the course of the 7 years I lived in Los Angeles as an adult. They are literally the only sports team I care about.  I’ve seen the Dodgers blow many a playoff game and I’ve experienced many seasons where they didn’t come close to the Postseason. Shouldn’t I be happy they made it as far as they did? The Dodgers have had some rough years and I know they are hated far and wide, so it was awesome to see them become a more cohesive team with a better image. Winning the World Series would have felt like a fresh start (at least to this fan.)

I’ve lived in LA over the course of 15 years of my 35 trips around the sun. While I no longer live there and love living a couple hundred miles up the coast, I miss LA. While it’s a sprawling, grimy city with an empty and vapid reputation, it’s still my city and I will always have a soft spot for it. Recently I’ve found myself reminiscing about my time there and missing it more than I ever could have imagined. Of course, I don’t miss it enough to move back (at least not at the moment) but I haven’t counted it out all together.

Of course, I think my sadness is about more than the World Series and missing LA. I think I’m also experiencing some post-marathon fog. While it’s nice to have weekends back and not have to worry about fitting runs in all the time, I miss having something to train for. Running helps me keep depression at bay and makes me feel like I have a purpose (even if I’m still slow after all these years.) While I’ve got a few half marathons on my calendar for 2018, it’s not the same. I made a lot of progress with my Chicago Marathon training and I want to build on it.

So, you might be wondering where I’m going with all of this (believe me, I’m still wondering that myself.) In my haze of sadness and over-analysis of Game 7, I somehow arrived at the conclusion that running the 2018 Los Angeles Marathon would be the cure-all for not only for the Dodgers’ loss, but also my post-marathon blues. Best of all, the marathon starts in Dodger Stadium. Yes, I realize it might be the dumbest reason of all time to sign up for a marathon, and no, I can’t explain how I feel like this would be healing.

The only thing holding me back from breaking out the credit card and paying nearly $200 to run 26.2 miles is that the marathon is 19 weeks and 1 day away. I just spent the last five months trashing my body. I’m not sure jumping back into marathon training so soon is a good idea. I was already planning on running it in 2019 or 2020, since it’s on my race bucket list, so why not just wait? Yet, it’s all that is on my mind right now.

My current plan is to see how the next few weeks go. I’ve been running for the past few weeks, but it’s been short distances and I’ve lost some fitness. If I can jump back into regular running over the next few weeks and I still feel good, then I will likely sign up to run in 2018. Who knows? Maybe by then I’ll have some of my sanity back and I will have returned to a state of normalcy in which I realize that life goes on after a heartbreaking World Series loss.