Tuesday, September 12, 2006

The Survival Story!

Depending on your perspective, either my run today was hugely successful or only moderately so. At the moment I’m leaning more toward to HUGELY Successful.
After a long day of teaching I changed at the RSF and headed out along the Ohlone Greenway for a nice 10 mile run. Mind you, I haven’t run further than 5 miles at one go since the marathon, which we are now 6 weeks out from. So, I was hoping to be able to do it pretty well and just have a few complaints. Well, here come the complaints:
1) It seems that when you fix one leg in physical therapy, the other one fucks up. In a way this makes sense. Imagine your left leg is doing just fine while your right leg is running like some sort of quasi-modo cerebral palsy poster child. It only stands to reason that when you fix the right leg the left leg is no longer going to understand it’s job. So, now it is the left leg that feels like a poster child for some disfiguring child disorder. A mile out on any run I have to stop and stretch my shins before I can go on. Today I had to stop at mile 2 and 3 and 5.
2) Plumbers butt is only attractive on the repairman Julio who has just arrived to fix the pool’s filtration system. At mile 7 I encountered a case of plumbers butt for the record books. Not only was the fabric of his shorts a good 5 inches down the crack of his ass, the thing was covered in cellulite and not moving fast enough to get away from me before I was tricked into an inspection that can only be accounted for with the trainwreck principle. No matter how badly you want to look away, you just can’t.
3) When you get most of a run done and have to walk a mile back to the RSF it is not a pretty walk. I’m sorry, call me a snob, but Berkeley is a fucking ugly city. If they aren’t homeless they are heroine chic vegetarians with hairdos badly in need of conditioning. 'Nuff Said!

OK! Enough complaining. The good news is that I ran at least 8.5 miles of that 10 I set out to do today. Not a bad deal all and all. Considering the amount of time that has elapsed since my last long run, I certainly can’t complain. Well, maybe about the plumbers butt.
It was also a beautiful day. The run started just a bit warm, but it cooled off soon enough as I was running in the shade of the BART tracks in the afternoon. I ran past Sabrina’s house and contemplated knocking and asking for some water. In the end I decided to push on.
I got quite tired near the end and my knee started to hurt a little, so I felt it would be best if I walked the rest of the way. So, from somewhere near Shattuck and Berkeley I walked all the way back to the RSF.

Run Distance: 10 miles
Total time: 1:47:26
Average Time: 10:45/mile
Overall Impression: Nice To Be Back Out On A Long Run Again, But Still Could Have Done Without The Plumbers Butt At Mile 7! (NTBBOOALRABSCHDWTPBAM7!) Do I get points for being the first to incorporate a Numeral in the Overall Impression?

Stats for the week:
Total Miles: 16.5
Average Time: 9:45/mile

4 comments:

dr. deetschei said...

Hey man! Thats great news. I think its totally normal to favor a leg when the other one is injured. Were you running around in small circles the whole time, as one leg went faster than the other? ;)
I'm really impressed with your durability though. I think 8.5 miles is plenty long, especially after a marathon and injury. It's amazing how our persepctives towards distances changes. I remember when 5 miles was a pretty big stetch, and now its nothing. I think you have to remind yourself that when you are starting fresh, the short distances have collectively decided to reinstate themselves as moderate to long runs, and try and get back into the mind set where the runs get the respect of moderate to long runs...or else you'll just beat yourself up if they're harder than you remember.... They do this without asking our permission of course.

BTW, I'm saying "you" in a very general "one" here. Damn blurring second person stuff and stuff

dr. deetschei said...

Dude! Is Berekely ugly, or are the people in Berkeley ugly? I think its a beautiful town, but I agree, the average looks of people at a public university of its size are alarmingly, well, bad.

dr. deetschei said...

Dude, you totally just beat me to including a numeral in the overall impression too! man, i knew i should have possted last night :)

Dr. Pavement Pounder said...

Crack kills, man! I am glad you didn't die right there on the spot.

You rock my world! I can't believe you upped your miles that quickly. Kudos.