This afternoon, my running schedule, which dictates many of my afternoons from now until April 21st (and may or may not be henceforth referred to as “the Oracle), told me to run five miles. Therefore, five miles I ran. Well, possibly five. I’ll have to check on mapmyrun.com (be careful, it is a highly addictive website). I thought my route, which I have run before, would take me around fifty minutes, which means, on my pace, around five miles. It turns out things go a lot faster without a dog. Bruschi the Mutt goes to “school” on Wednesdays. This is, yes, doggy day care. My dad is probably not proud of this fact; in his mind, dogs are supposed to run around in the yard and bark at strangers, and they’re just dogs for Lord’s sake. They don’t need day care; they need tough love. Well, Bruschi the Mutt is not always the most happily social of dogs so he goes to school to practice. That’s what school is for (so there, Dad). And I might add Bruschi adores it and gets the best grades, naturally. And don't forget how good a tired dog is.
So, without a four legged running buddy, previously timed fifty minute runs become much shorter. Today, for instance, it took 38 minutes. I knew it was going faster than usual but I also knew there was no way I ran five miles in that amount of time. I had to invent a lame loop at the end to try to make up for it. If you must know, I do not enjoy doing things simply for the sake of doing them, so having to add on to a perfectly good loop just because it wasn’t long enough sort of pissed me off. Even the new run came to about 44 minutes. I left it at that and pat myself on the back for possibly being faster than usual. I bet when I check the mileage I will feel cheated but, alas, I don’t care. And I don’t care because I was frickin’ starving starting about half way through said run.
Food is so weird. You have to eat it for energy and power, but your body doesn’t particularly like you to eat it right before you need energy and power. If you don’t time your run exactly so you have digested your last meal enough but are not even close to needing your next meal yet then you will either become hungry or uncomfortable on your run. Neither of these are things I like to be. But I sort of forgot to mow down a snack before I left for a ski team meeting and then I had to leave right away to get outside before the sun set…and by the time mile three came around I was salivating over the perfectly ripe (just a little brown-ish for me) banana I knew was waiting for me in the fruit basket on the counter and thinking about how much peanut butter would be too much to put on it.
The answer, just like the answer to “how much wine is too much on a Friday after a long and terrible day at work/fight with your SO (significant other)/blind date/really any other situation works here too?” is: there can never be too much.
So, without a four legged running buddy, previously timed fifty minute runs become much shorter. Today, for instance, it took 38 minutes. I knew it was going faster than usual but I also knew there was no way I ran five miles in that amount of time. I had to invent a lame loop at the end to try to make up for it. If you must know, I do not enjoy doing things simply for the sake of doing them, so having to add on to a perfectly good loop just because it wasn’t long enough sort of pissed me off. Even the new run came to about 44 minutes. I left it at that and pat myself on the back for possibly being faster than usual. I bet when I check the mileage I will feel cheated but, alas, I don’t care. And I don’t care because I was frickin’ starving starting about half way through said run.
Food is so weird. You have to eat it for energy and power, but your body doesn’t particularly like you to eat it right before you need energy and power. If you don’t time your run exactly so you have digested your last meal enough but are not even close to needing your next meal yet then you will either become hungry or uncomfortable on your run. Neither of these are things I like to be. But I sort of forgot to mow down a snack before I left for a ski team meeting and then I had to leave right away to get outside before the sun set…and by the time mile three came around I was salivating over the perfectly ripe (just a little brown-ish for me) banana I knew was waiting for me in the fruit basket on the counter and thinking about how much peanut butter would be too much to put on it.
The answer, just like the answer to “how much wine is too much on a Friday after a long and terrible day at work/fight with your SO (significant other)/blind date/really any other situation works here too?” is: there can never be too much.
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