Still on the Run

In case you were wondering - and you all spend vast chunks of every day wondering about me, I'm sure - I am back on schedule for my half-marathon training.

Last Saturday, after I froze my ass off coaching my son's soccer game, my wife and I went for a long run. According to her, we talked about scaling it down, maybe just doing 8. My recollection was that we would go 10.

So we bundled up and got to running. Of course, by the time we started it was warmer out so I got really hot right away and had to peel away the layers. Still, I was not coughing and my legs felt pretty good. I think I got way high off of endorphins, because about 4 miles into it I thought about extending it to 12 miles. That's really what the training schedule said we should be doing, and I missed the long run the week before. Plus, we were going halfway and turning around, so that put the target at 6 miles, not really 12. Very achievable.

I was way ahead of my wife due to the fact that I am 6'1" and she is 5'2" (despite her steadfast claims she is really 5'3"...but than again, she always lies about her age, so can we really trust her on her height?). I looked down at my Garmin GPS watch.

"Kirk to Enterprise. Give me a bearing, Sulu," I commanded.

Just kidding. I'm not that big of a geek. Well, maybe I am, but still I didn't actually say that. I just saw that I hit 5 miles, so it was time to turn around and go back, so I kept going for another half mile before I turned around.

I was at about 5.75 miles when I met up with my wife. She knew I went past the 5 mile mark and she was P-I-S-S-S-S-E-D. But really, she only went a quarter-mile past, and that's not too far. She failed to appreciate this logic.

I was doing great until about 8 miles in, and after that the final 3 were the epitome of pain. I kept looking at my Garmin GPS watch.

"Scotty, beam me the f&^% out of here!"

Again, I just thought that up now and didn't really say it while I was running, but if I would have said it, I would have meant every word. Especially f&^%.

Once we got home, I fixed dinner. After we ate, our neighbor's kids came over for a sleepover (our neighbors were going to their friends 40th b-day party, and now they owe us a night of babysitting. Yay!). By the time we got the kids to bed, it was time to hide Easter baskets. All said and done, after we ran 11 miles we didn't get to sit down until about 1am, at which point we bypassed sitting and just collapsed into bed.

But wait, there's more!

The kids woke up at 6:45am Sunday morning and tried their damnedest to make as much noise as possible while they searched for their Easter baskets. They are really good at making noise. They should go pro. I realized that I wouldn't fall back asleep and crawled out of bed around 7:45am, downed some ibuprofen, and started an all day cooking marathon, the highlight of which was grilled pizzas - but that's another story...