Running at Night

Well, this is heartening.

I actually sort of skipped week 2, but that's ok because I was a week behind. Further, doing only four miles last night would have felt incomplete.

Speaking of last night, I prefer to run at night for three reasons. First, the sun isn't beating down on my head, and it's generally cooler. Second, there are less cars on the road which is safer and car exhaust makes running more difficult. Third, when it's dark, it's hard to see my surroundings. When running on a fixed route, seeing the same mile go past me four times gets boring and distracting and makes it easier to quit.

Let me try to clarify. First, it's not like I can't run in the daytime. I can. But more people are driving cars during the day, the sun is hotter, the air is drier. It's just less fun.

In addition, if I'm running a course known to me — a track at the high school, the 1-mile block I run around, it gets boring being able to see everything over and over. Believe it or not, boredom is distracting. It makes it easier to give up tonight and run tomorrow instead.

But when it's dark, the air is cooler. Less people drive at nighttime and I simply don't believe the runners who say car exhaust doesn't effect them. I can tell the difference going from the weird little residential streets that make my course to the highway that is my half-mile route home. Exhaust slows me down and it just sucks more to run with cars nearby.

But I expect all that to be a non-issue with the marathon. Why? Because it's a 26.2-mile track, not a 1-mile track I'm going to run 26 times. Meaning the scenery will change with every step, with every mile. So I wont be distracted with boredom. Probably. The sun could be an issue, though. I imagined dumping water on my head, but water drips down one's back and lands immediately in the butt-crack which leads to swamp-ass. I'll have to think on this.

Stevie's been great lately. I don't actually have anything to report with her other than she loves me and I love her. The heart wants what the heart wants. Oh, and the other day, Lance Armstrong himself congratulated me on my fastest mile yet. I don't know how fast that was, but my overall pace for the three-mile run was 8:14, which is about a minute faster than I need to maintain if I want to finish in under four hours. Which I do. It will also give me a bit of a buffer when I slow down toward the end of the marathon.

I'm working on making a recording of Stevie telling me I'm doing a great job, but GarageBand is remarkably not easy to use for basic tasks, so who knows when that'll happen.

Finally, on Friday, I had my first personal training session at my gym. Thing is, "personal training" has the same sort of crappy connotation as "Pampered Chef" to me. Pampered Chef stuff might be great, but it's got "entitled asshole" written all over it. First of all, you are, at best, a cook, not a chef. Second, you don't deserve to be pampered. You're a douchebag.

So I don't do personal training. I go to lifting lessons. My first lesson was with Susan.

A photo of a photo. She's still a good looking chick.

What was awesome about her is that she was in incredible shape. She looked fantastic. I guess I just feel that a lifting teacher should look incredible. A fat lifting teacher is not somebody who I would trust to tell me what is a good idea. It'd be like trusting a mechanic without dirty fingernails or a computer salesman without an Apple shirt.

Anyway, she taught me a lot of stuff I didn't know before. Today was the first real workout I've had since then, and it was incredible. Way better than days previous. I spent half as much time at the gym and got twice as much out of it.

That tells me she's a good teacher and I was ready to learn.

Alright. This has turned far too long. I'll leave with this extremely marathon-themed photo which I took today at the gym.

Thanks again, Blaine. The shirt has been an inspiration to me, believe it or not.