Good Days, Bad Days, Marathon Training

Week Three

It is the end of week three in our marathon training. With the exception of this past Thursday, it has been going really well.

Thursday was our Speed Workout day.

It was 85 degrees out and all of the omens were screaming, "DON'T RUN!"

We got caught at every red light on the way to the run (and I do mean EVERY red light).

Don Paul was posting storm warnings up the butt, and when we finally arrived at our destination, we (he) realized we (he) had forgot the Garmin and we had to go back and get it.

But did we listen to the omens? Of course nut, I mean, not.

We started with a one mile warm up. It's kind of hard to have a bad warm-up, but I was off my game from the get-go. My legs felt like lead doing an 11:00 minute mile. Not good.

On to the next three miles - the fast ones - did I mention it was 85 degrees out?

The first fast mile was four seconds slower than it should have been. Nutjob not happy.

Midway into the second mile I was feeling hot, dizzy and needing to jump into a swimming pool very badly. If the pool had a wet bar, even better. I was sweating more profusely than Dr. Nutjob, and he's a pretty sweaty guy.

But he did not seem at all concerned with my worsening condition. What kind of a doctor was he, anyway? I was obviously suffering. My forehead was so hot you could have cooked hamburgers on it. Mmmm, hamburgers . . .

Anyway, by mile three,the fast run had turned considerably slower as my suffering grew worse - hot flashes, couldn't do simple math problems, forgot who our vice president was. Again, Dr. Nutjob not worried at all.

I knew my mentor (mental case?) would not be happy but I had to slow down my pace. The run was turning bad quickly.

Then the Storm clouds rolled in. The wind picked up, and the rain came pouring down. Tree branches were flying onto the path and I swear a cow sailed past us.

We should have listened to Don Paul.

Still a half mile from the car, the lightning began flashing across the sky. This time I didn't object when he picked the pace back up. Ancient Chinese saying - "better to get side stitch than die from lightening strike". Or something like that.

Soaking wet, with tree remnants in my hair, we finally reached the lone truck left in the parking lot.

Dr. Nutjob looked at his watch, "That was way too slow!" he said, shaking his head in disgust. If he had a red marker he would have written slacker across my forehead.

On the ride back home, with the storm growing more violent I was just happy to be safe. We all have our good days and bad days.

You can kill yourself running or you can live to run another day.

I chose to live. Color me noble.

Dr. Nutjob would have probably colored me differently if he hadn't forgotten to bring the red marker.