Tired!

It’s been steamily hot the past few afternoons, so Kevin and I have been running in the morning (much to his chagrin). Since Wednesday is long run day, this means that we dragged ourselves out of bed at 4 this morning, planning to run 18 miles before work. And we actually did! (And weren’t even that late! Starting with our next long run, we’ve arranged to come in late, so this won’t be an issue.)

We ran from our house, over to the Farmington Canal Trail, then 3.5 miles up the trail (starting at the lower end of the long green section on the map--this section is about 10 miles long, total), and then back home. (Just as an aside, how funny is the phrase “linear park”? There’s a sign over the trail that welcomes you to the Farmington Canal Linear Park, which makes me smile every time I see it… it’s totally accurate, because the park is only as wide as the railroad right of way, but still funny! At least when you’re exhausted. As though the park is only 1 dimensional! Maybe you need to be math-y, as well as tired?) The sun rose about 3 miles in, although it was still kind of dim and misty when we got home. And wow! but it was humid. The humidity when we started was about 95%, and at one point must have reached 100% because the air filled with little raindrops.

The other thing that’s funny (?) about running that far is that by the end, it’s all I can do to keep going. You know those peppy runners whose ponytails bounce as the spring over curbs, small dogs, trashcans, and Jersey barriers? Not me—I’m not springy under the best of circumstances, and after a couple of hours any spring I might have started with is used up. At that point, I’m essentially running out of inertia, and anything that disrupts that (curbs, needing to pause for traffic, other runners, pedestrians, etc.) seems like it will require more energy than I can possibly muster. I wonder a lot what other runners think we’re up to—are they long distance runners themselves, and do they recognize what’s going on? Or do they run for 30 minutes or an hour, tops, and wonder what’s wrong with us? (In reality, I don’t think we look as pathetic as we feel. Or at least I hope not!)

I know this sounds like I hate running, but I really don’t—I actually love that I can do this (however slowly), since it’s so unlike my image of myself. Plus, it lets me eat more cookies.

More later (if I can muster the energy), including the Mystery Sole, my Tour de France KAL scarf, and the cardi I'm knitting for Schaefer Yarns (which it turns out I can blog about after all).