I've been a very lazy, very bad Athena this spring. I haven't met my training goals in one single week, and now I must do penance, by training extra hard over the next two months. With no classes, except for belly dance on Monday nights, and lots of time on my hands, I have no excuse not to do so. Plus, if I want to meet my goal of a sub-10-minute mile, I need to get off the couch. NOW.Some of my favorite excuses this spring: too hot, too cold, too windy, not enough wind, too early, too late, my foot hurts, my knee hurts, I'm tired, haven't eaten, just ate, not hydrated enough, too full of water to run just now, I'll be late for work, I just got home from work...and on and on. You get the point.
The Olympic Triathlon I did last weekend was case and point: I finished this, not because I was fit and ready for it, but because I'm incredibly stubborn. In the words of Heidi Kelchner, "what I lack in speed I make up for in pure, pig-headed perseverence"
Today I went for a "long run" which at this point means 10K. Pretty bad considering I've done a couple half marathons. I won't even tell you how
slow I was. It was pathetic. I was winded, and I coughed a lot. Given my lack of fitness at this point, the fact that it's spring, I didn't quite become the flem monster, but I was close. Oddly enough, it seems that when I'm running I'm okay, but when I stop I practically cough up a lung. What's that all about?It was a beautiful day on the Bosque trail, thought it was getting a bit crowded when I was done. If you've never experienced summer mornings in the high desert, let me give you some adjectives: Crisp. Cool. Clear. Calm.
Now some nouns: Slight breeze. Hot-air balloons. Recumbants. Walkers. Families. People running happy dogs. There were a few clouds of gnats to contend with (I'm pretty sure the people behind me who hadn't yet encountered them thought I'd gone mad, leaping and waving my arms all over the place) and happy swallows chasing and devouring them.
It felt like things were "back to normal," though. Shuffling along, listening to my Mp3 player, with some of my favorite songs repaced to match my jogging/shuffle.
I will run three times a week (including races) from now on. there. I said it, and publicly. Now I have to do it.
