Recovering the Satellites

Maybe you have noticed. Of course, there are probably so few of you reading my entries here that no one has noticed. Anyway, I have started titling my entries after the names of songs or albums. Now, if you are under the age of 25, you might not know what an album is. An album is a vinyl disc with lots of grooves that produces exceptional static with words and music strewn throughout. On this disc is a collection of songs. “Ah!” you say, “it is like a CD”! Yes, it is like a CD.

Now that we have the basics out of the way, I have decided to title the entry after a song or CD, and think about my running experience in terms of that title. Usually the title comes to me while running. Some of the more recent entries were named after Kenny Chesney songs. This one is named after a Counting Crows CD. So what does Recovering the Satellites have to do with running?

As I was running on Wednesday, I thought to myself, “I feel really good and my legs feel like they have recovered from the weekend”. The weekend included the Runner’s World Half Marathon (see Living Here in Allentown). There are general rules of thumb about recovery after racing. One idea is to allow one easy day of running for each mile run in the race. Some people take a couple of full days off. I tend to take the next day off and then ease into running until my body tells me that it feels good and I can set my sights on training for another race. However, feeling good and being recovered are not necessarily one in the same. This is where the satellites come into play.

During my run on Wednesday, the reasoning behind this entry and the subsequent titling of it in reference to a song or album went like this:

“Hey, I feel like I have recovered. I feel great today! Hmmm, but I know that all those little muscle fibers have not recovered. All those torn little cylindrical multinucleate cells composed of myofibrils (OK, I didn’t really think that) are like little disparate satellites dancing around under my skin trying to find protein to rebuild themselves. It must be a false recovery under the glycogen store guise. I need to recover the satellites. Hey, that’s the name of a Counting Crows album (Hah, kids these days don’t even know what albums are). I think that will be my next entry on my blog”.

The mind of a runner sure works in strange ways. We carry on conversations with ourselves. When running alone, how else can we run at conversational pace? Maybe I should title my next entry Talking Heads!