Did anybody think I was so busy with theatrical murder that I was forgetting my Boilermaker ambitions? Say it ain’t so! Last week was not the best I’ve had (this is using a Sunday through Saturday week as opposed to a Monday through Sunday week, as some see it) (ooh, that could be a whole other blog post, where the week starts and ends, help me remember that, will you?). However (are you still with me after those long parenthetical comments?), one can improve. So I had a good run today, and now I’m going to write a Running Commentary post about it.
I waited to run till almost 11:30, because it was cold this morning. It was not too cold to run, but I also wanted to hang out with my husband, go to the grocery store, maybe do the dishes… Of course this would give me plenty of opportunity to talk myself out of running at all, but I managed to avoid that disaster. As a matter of fact, it was easier to get myself to run than it was to do the dishes, and there weren’t that many dishes. I was just not in the mood to do the dishes.
Once the dishes were done, though, and I took another Facebook break (that is what I do on Sundays: get a little bit done, look at Facebook, repeat), I got dressed and went. It was 46 degrees, one degree above my cut-off for shorts and short sleeves, so I thought, Score! I still put on a wide headband to cover my ears. I placed my sweatshirt and water bottle in a handy spot for my cool-down walk and took off.
The first thing I did was to re-think my cut-off temperature for shorts and short sleeves. That wind was cold! But there was nothing to do but keep running and hope for a hot flash. It was a sunny day with some clouds (I don’t want to say “partly cloudy” because it really did seem more sun than cloud). When the sun came out fully and the wind died down, I felt some warmth. The sidewalks were almost completely bare, so I appreciated that.
I wished my running time were long enough to run up the hill to Herkimer College (formerly HCCC) (pronounced H-triple-C). I wanted to feel bad-ass, and it was such a bright day the view would have been awesome. I tried to mentally calculate when I would be running long enough to make it up and back, but I couldn’t do the math. I went up the hill by Valley Health instead. That turned out to be challenging enough for me. I was out of breath by the time I reached the top and turned left. As I noted the sidewalk still rising at a lesser angle, my in-head narration was interrupted by my realization that I did not know the name of the street I was on. There was a street sign. Exchange Avenue. As I continued to run, I pondered what could be the difference between a street and an avenue and how they decide which gets named what.
My goal for the run was 31 minutes, that is, 10 percent longer than I ran last weekend. My body vacillated between “I can rock this” and “Can we stop now?” I kept going for my full 31 minutes. As I walked my cool-down, my legs felt wonderful, as if they would soon be capable of carrying me for miles. I told myself I was going to be in great shape for the Boilermaker 15K. And if I continue to eat sensibly, running will help me attain my weight-loss goals. I will be a mean, lean, not very fast running machine!
