running biography

This post is a continuation of yesterday's pity party. So, here's what gets to go into the biography of my life based on today's experience, still with calves that don't know me and running like an experimental dancer who does not understand what it means to go "straight forward", possibly for abstruse reasons. But as I got around twenty minutes into the run I took, I suddenly found my very own body vying to run with a forefoot strike, despite all the pain, less while in motion. The coach was right, and also right that the pain doesn't seem like it will be hanging around. Which is not to say that I am walking normally now the muscles have cooled down, just that it seems like that kind of pain of adaptation.
In addition to making these experiments on today's run, I also added in a metronome, which I set to 173BPM to start with - as suggested by a Sage Canaday and Sandi Nypaver video. I was actually looking to avenge myself knowing that I have read that not all coaches insist on the forefoot strike - Sage and Sandi recommend that more important than footstrike is cadence.
It can feel so ridiculous to keep adjusting arm swing (by which I mean, stop 'chicken wing positioning' my arms) and also to have a Metronome Beat playing as one runs in public places, but as of today, I am determined to try to improve and will be using all my running time to this end - even when I am in the city center. Although it truly seems to me that the Low-Fi Rhythm from no boom box but cell phone was a small price to pay for better running: it occurred to me that previously I might have been running to a more Mediterranean rhtythm (note, which also defies the straight line).
 

But most important of all, I think today I got over myself - and that shroud of shame I felt when someone commented on my signature running style (RIP soon?!) That became less important because nothing overcomes feelings of inadequacy better than crawling to improve. I do not fear being ridiculed if I am at least making the attempt.
And yesterday I was thinking of that Hahn quote about disabilities being opportunities. Today, one such opportunity was the moment I got over my bruised ego. So what if I looked stupid? I was having fun in that special way only diversions that absorb the mind as well can bring, outside in the fresh air, etc. Also, as pointed out in a super nifty Classical Wisdom Weekly post, "ego is our enemy". Sometimes it is nice to have a little skirmish with the ego, and defeat it.
And speaking of character (developing innate strength to overcome innate weakness) and biographies and reading, this post was inspired by a passage from one of my favourite (pet favourite) Victorian novels, The Caxtons. In this passage, reading biographies is prescribed for sadness, and as I reread it I was thinking how trying to write a better biography of one's own life can also have a similar effect. As Hahn also said, grow to be what you are. This is done, in part, by resolving to tackle weakness.
...when some one sorrow, that  is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania — when  you think, because heaven has denied you this or that, on which  you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank — oh ! then  diet yourself well on biography — the biography of good and great  men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See  scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own ;  and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it ! You thought the wing was broken ! — Tut — tut — it was but a bruised feather ! See what life leaves behind it when all is done ! — a summary of positive  facts far out of the region of sorrow and suffering, linking themselves with the being of the world. Yes, biography is the medicine here.
 
Brush: ewansim via Deviantart.

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