Springing Realizations

Today I had three epiphanies about myself and my habits as a runner.

First and most importantly, I am not a runner. Well, perhaps that's a little harsh -- maybe I'm a runner but with an asterisk and a footnote. I discovered this full force today. It was the most beautiful day of the year so far; the fog had lifted, the temperatures were about twenty degrees above normal and hovered in the mid-50s all day, the sun was out, I had nothing to do all day, church was good, and it was my birthday. I'm assuming that a true runner would have looked at all those things and found an incredible amount of motivation to get out and run because a regular runner wants to run for the sake of running. I did not. I was perfectly content to watch my wife napping next to me while playing Civilization IV on our laptop. Unlike a "normal" runner, I discovered that I want to run for the sake of training for a half marathon and eventually for a full marathon by the time I'm 30. So for me, the end is the goal, while I'm assuming that the journey is the goal for most "normal" runners.

Second, I discovered that even with 547 songs on shuffle on my iPod nano, I am still getting sick of listening to the same music. I guess there's not really much more to say about that other than to think out loud that maybe I need to take another look at Podrunner or just learn to run without music.

Third, I discovered that even if I wear shorts on a day like today, I won't regret doubling up on my upper layers, particularly if I'm running close to dusk and it's windy out. That's true even if I'm sweating and questioning my sanity on the first part of the run.

I guess that's about all. For some reason I thought I had a lot more to say, but now, five hours after I finished my run, I don't remember any of it. So on to the details.

I did 5.26 miles today with a total time of 64:20. I thought I was making better time on the way back despite some knee pain that I ran through (left knee....again), but I had a positive split by about 40 seconds. On the upside, my mile pace was around 12:15 for the run as a whole, which is great, especially considering that it's the longest run I've done on this training plan so far.

I've got some tough runs this week, not in terms of mileage or speed, but in terms of time. I've got a really, really busy week, plus a race on Saturday; I can't afford to miss a day this week.

By the way, for interested parties, the race I'm doing is Run for the Orphans (I think) in Minneapolis. My brother-in-law found it.