Run #4

Ahhh.  That feels a little better, after a meal fit for three kings.

I'm no doctor, nor am I a Sports Medicine Expert (that would just be silly, since my best sport is Slouching) - but I'm pretty certain it's inadvisable to run after a huge Mexican lunch and a very huge Italian dinner (hey, they practically FORCED that entire 10" pizza, baseball bat sized breadstick and chocolate molten lava dessert down my throat).

But despite the obvious discomfort (the same kind of discomfort you would feel if a very perturbed Klingon shoved a d'k tagh under your ribs and wriggled it around to express how much you have dishonored him) - I still managed to meet the ridiculously ambitious goal I had set for myself: 2.0 miles in 20:00 minutes.

That means I maintained 6.0 mph for a third of an hour!  Amazing!  I mean, can a cheetah even do that?  I know, huh?

By half way there (10 minutes), I was really struggling.  I tried to tell myself, "You're half way there!" - but that just depressed me.  So, I tried to think of times when 10 minutes seems like nothing.  Didn't really help.  So, I decided to put it in the perspective of the fact that I am doing this so that I can live another 40 years or so - and compared to that, 10 minutes is nothing.

By the time I got around to that somewhat unconvincing bit of philosophical trickery, I was at 1.33 miles, with .67 miles to go.  I am starting to notice a pattern: from 1.33 miles to 1.5 miles, I seem to hit my stride and for that brief window, I don't feel like death is extremely imminent - only that it is just around the corner.

Which it very nearly is, because by the time I am at 1.65 miles, I am once again asking, "Why why why why why why WHY????"  And that angry Klingon has returned with a vengeance, stuck me in an airlock and opened the outside door to space.

This run was the first one where, instead of my back, neck and shoulders hurting and my legs getting tired, I found that my back, neck and shoulders hurting and my legs getting tired was obscured by the fact that my lungs wanted to report me for abuse.

I'm still trying to decide if that sorta-good feeling I have about 20-30 minutes after the run is because of something good I did to my body, or if it's just because the agony has come to an end at last.  It's like some sort of weird physical Stockholm Syndrome - even though it hurts me, I find myself sympathizing with the treadmill's agenda.

And once again, I've got this stupid goofy sweat-grin across my belly.

I hate running.

My next insanely suicidal goal is to increase my distance by 10% to 2.2 miles, and take it at a little slower pace, like 5.5 mph.  Then I will keep inching up the distance in increments of 0.2 miles until I am at 3.1 miles, then keep shaving off time until I can do 3.1 miles in 30 minutes.  And I want to achieve that by Thanksgiving, so I can run the Turkey Day 5k in under 30 minutes.  I did the run last year in just over 36 minutes, and that was with zero training (cold turkey), running for the first time since I was a kid.

I used to think running was only worthwhile if there was something life-threatening chasing you.  Well, I've realized that DEATH is life-threatening, and it's chasing each of us all the time.  I want to stick around for a while, for my wife and son.  So I will run.

But . . . I really hate running.