The X-Factor
Six months into the lockdown and this is the first time I felt it. I had craved for some time for it. Never expected to feel this way until when things got back to normal. For the first four and half months, it was quite dry. I couldn’t go out for my usual run. I was pretty much stuck up at home. The treadmill lured me towards itself but having had a history with it, a history of injuries, I had to refrain from it. Although my mind wanted me to run on it, my legs were hesitant. They resisted every bit of push provided. Four and half months later, I just could not hold myself any longer. I had begun to feel the sense of restlessness creep into me. It was more like a with-drawl symptom of not having gone for a run in such a long time. I just had to get a run under my belt.
Rather unfortunately, running on my treadmill was the inevitable choice now. I had to promise myself not to go too hard on those runs, and be watchful and very careful to avoid any injury because I knew, if I pushed myself too hard I would probably injure myself and would just have to sit like a couch potato for a few days. I couldn’t let that happen. Getting my legs moving was very necessary for me, so even though I hated the treadmill and never wanted to step a foot on it, once I had discovered the joy of running outside. My desperation for that run was enough to swallow up my ego of not setting a foot on the treadmill ever again.
Two and a half months into running on the treadmill, I didn’t feel a thing! No excitement, no feeling of elation, no sudden rush of energy and worst of all No Runner’s high! They were just empty, bland and tasteless runs! Although physically I was getting my legs moving and going well, internally I could feel a gap, a sense of void, as though something had just left me. Have I lost my enthusiasm for running?, I thought to myself but I kept at it, regardless of how I felt, and as I stepped on the treadmill for the 74th time in the last two and half months, it felt different today, it felt better ,something was surely different!
Pre-run, I had felt fatigued, due to the lack of sleep, the night before. I was running the day with merely four hours of sleep! I stepped on the treadmill anyhow, because you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Into the first minute of my run and I could sense something, something different. I could feel the difference between my earlier runs so far on the treadmill and this one. My running form felt great, my muscles worked synchronously as I moved one leg in front of the other. I felt no pain anymore. The fatigue prior to the run was gone, as though disappeared into thin air. My breathing was much more consistent now, my strides were symmetrical to each other, I didn’t feel like I was running anymore, just felt as if I was flowing. I could taste the sweetness of my sweat as it trickled past my forehead. It felt amazing!
Right when I was about to scale things up, raise the standard and increase the speed, there was a power outage! As the belt of the treadmill came to a halt, I dropped to my knees and just looked up in dismay, as though asking God why? For the first time in the last two and a half months had I had such a run and had to cut it midway due to a power outage! Why God? Why? I had run completed almost 3km in a span of fourteen minutes, and now I was just sitting on my treadmill in dismay. I sat there for a whole ten minutes, and the power was back. I sighed a sense of relief but right then it struck me, the power was back alright, but the run! I had to begin my run all over again, and the disappointment set in as my form and my run was disturbed which meant I wouldn’t get the same feeling now, again.
I stepped on the treadmill and began my run again, least expecting to have a good run. To my amazement my second run was a continuation of just where I had left off! How lucky was that! Sure the treadmill reading was from zero all over again, but who cared about the treadmill reading? It was the joy and a sense of elation that I had been after. As I went through my run, I tried to analyze where I had made a mistake in the last 70 odd runs, that I never felt this way before, what wrong had I done? To my conclusion, there was only one answer, X-Factor! The reason why I have been able to continue my passion for running over the years, the reason why I was able to go for runs even after having a tiresome day, everything, literally everything boiled down to this, The X-Factor! If you ask me what this X-factor is? I cannot tell. It cannot be put into words nor can it be explained to someone else, it can only be experienced.
I ran for 41 minutes and it felt so great that I just wanted to go on and on and just never stop. But I had a promise to keep up, a promise that I had made to myself, a promise not to run too much on the treadmill. However Great I felt, I had to stop. I had a look at the treadmill readings, 41 minutes, 8.87kms , a decent run, a good run in fact but the timing and the pace wasn’t the take away for me from this run, it was the X-Factor!
