Things of Fall

Things I should know by now...but have yet to find out.

• Look at the course map for my half on Sunday. When I casually brought this up, the Redhead said that she has already looked at it and has talked to a few runners who say it is a difficult course. Such things happen often.
  

• Look at the course map for the GR Marathon.

• Pick out my marathon outfit. Pick out my marathon playlist. Decide which shoes I'll be running in. And because I use the half has a pre-marathon test run, I better get going on these things.*

Which reminds me. This marathon I am going to make the last few miles special by rocking out to some of the best songs from the 80s. So, aside from "We Built This City" by Jefferson Airplane and "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" by John Parr, what shongs should I include?




*Except for the playlist, which I always save until the week of. I go out and get coffee and hang with college kids and make my marathon playlist. Also,I better get going on my song/no-song order. I'm thinknig 4M off, 4M on, 4M off, 4M on, 2M off, 2M on, 1M off, 2M on, 1M off, 2.2M on.

Winter Means Always Running at Night*

Last week I decided I was going to do a 12M long run at some point over the weekend. Thank you ambitious self, I love when you set goals for me. Saturday morning my alarm went off early. I turned it off and went back to sleep.

Sunday morning was a reoccurrence of Saturday morning and no running occurred. Thank you slacker self for destroying the goals ambitious self sets, breaking a little more of his esteem each time.

But, because it is what they do, that stupid unwanted and unanswered long run hung around like a ghost all day Sunday. Just jawing at me. “You gonna get out there and run?”

“No.” I reply.

“You’re lazy, and you suck at Mario Kart.” It says.

“I’m not even training for anything right now so back off. Stupid long run.”

I’m proud to say that, despite its persistence, I managed to not run all weekend. But long runs are not so easily defeated. So, around 7pm last night, after finishing yoga, I began my usual 3M easy run; which started out a little fast for an ‘easy’ run and turned into 4M before I knew it.

Worse, I was running an out/back route, so that 4M was undoubtedly going to be an 8M run. And yet, I kept going until I surpassed the 6M mark.

Because it gets dark at 2pm these days, basically all runs are ‘night’ runs, even if it is only 8pm. And, to add upon my already oversized pile of stupid ideas building avalanche-like momentum, I was running the hilliest route I know. A combination of two hill routes I would never run together. Stupid Spike.

All of this brings me to the point of this post, or the crescendo if you will. I once read an article in Runners World wherein a runner claimed running hills at night is easier because you can’t see the top, and therefore you just keep running.

That’s bullsh#t. In my opinion. Stupid Monday night long run.



*That is, unless you are Nitmos and get to ‘work’ at home and can enjoy long lunches that involve quality runs.