Sunday, July 3, 2011

running by feel


I had to convince myself not to run on Friday evening. I'd had a week of intense workouts, and thought that perhaps, even though it was a beautiful evening, I should give my body a day off.

I more than made up for it at the circus gym the next morning, and added a lovely evening walk with El Bandito watching the waves.

Today, after a wonderful, decadent day with friends and cocktails, I decided I really didn't want to skip another run, despite the fact that I was Feeling Lazy. (That deserved capitalization.) It was a surprisingly warm and sunny day, but the breeze had kicked up.

After getting changed and tying my shoes, I spent 15 minutes trying to locate my Garmin. I knew I'd seen it. El Bandito knew he'd seen it recently too. Eventually, I blamed Gozer the Destroyer (our polydactyl cat, whose name is not actually Gozer, but it's one of his many and accurate nicknames. aka, "why we can't have nice things". He's not that bad, but we're easily amused.) and went ahead without the Garmin.

I didn't even look at the clock when I left the house. I know the approximate distances in my normal loops in the park, and planned to simply run one of them so that I could know how far I'd gone. I was taking it easy, though I didn't have a real sense of pace -- I still have no idea of how fast or slow I was going. I assume it was slow, especially given that my afternoon involved more than one tasty libation.

About 3/4 through my planned route, it suddenly occurred to me that it really did feel easy. I picked up the pace a little bit and then decided to push on past what would have been the final turn.

I only added another 1/2-3/4 of a mile, but it was nice to be running for the joy of it. And to walk into the house and be told that dinner was about 3 minutes from being done (thanks, Awesome El Bandito!)

And since it's a three-day weekend, I get a long bike ride and baking day tomorrow (as well as catching up on household and work items... sigh... never-ending laundry.)