Stuff

Bob -

On Sunday I went out and ran a half marathon on a trail.  It was a fairly difficult trail in terms of being pretty narrow in spots, lots of rocks and roots and trees, plus hills.  Hills that I had to walk up at times.  I really hate to walk.  Not so much for ego sake, but because my legs tighten up quickly.  They feel better when I am running.  But, with some of those hills, I had to walk.  There are markers on the trail to show you where you should turn, but they can be missed fairly easily because you spend a lot of time looking at the ground, so as not to trip on something.  At least I do.  I have fallen a few times, nothing serious, but I have seen some pretty nasty falls by others.  A few weeks ago on a trail run, I stumbled down a hill for about what seemed like 50 yards.  The whole time I was screaming the f bomb, like that was going to help.  For like two minutes I was yelling, "f@@@@@@@@@@@@$$$$$$$$$$$$^^^^^^^^^^", well you get it, right?  I do not have the cleanest mouth when I run, especially when I am tripping.  I ended up not falling, but I was glad that I was among friends who know how I talk.   The point of the this is that sometimes I miss turns and go off course because I am half an idiot.  Sundays half marathon turned into about 14 plus miles.  I needed that because I missed my long run on Saturday, which was supposed to be 19 miles.  I felt that I let myself down and my training partners(who by the way are wonderful, but don't tell them I said so).  I am supposed to be doing a marathon in October.  I hate marathons, I don't like the training for marathons.  I do have a goal, however, and it is to do this marathon.  And do it well enough hopefully that I never want to do another one.  See, I don't love long distance.  I like the shorter stuff, but this is something that I want to do and be done with.  Know that I trained adequately and gave it my all and then put that baby to bed.  The baby being the marathon in case you got confused.  Baby marathon needs to go to bed and go sleepy bye bye.  I said good night, baby marathon, now get your ass to bed!!  Now I'm upset and I forgot what I was talking about.  Something about babies and lots of miles.  Let's see...baby...bedtime...sleepy...doodie diapers...oh yeah, marathon.  I missed my long run, so for penance and to see how much endurance I lost, I went and ran the trail half.  My personal thing is when I get a bit down, I go beat the crap out of myself in a workout to either see how bad things really are or to work out the kinks.  It usually happens that the kinks get worked out.  It turns out that it was the best thing that I could have done.  There is nothing like a long run through the woods to get your head turned around.  It was painful, it was hard, it was beautiful and there were people I had never met before doing the same thing I was.  That is one the realizations I have had lately.  That no matter how tough you think you are, or what a good runner you think you are or what a bad runner you think you are, in any given race there are hundreds going through the same shit you are.  They may be faster, but they are hurting.  They may be slower, but they are hurting.  Because everyone is trying to do their best.  At least they should be.  I am very time oriented.  I am pretty goal oriented.  I don't care who I beat, I want to do my best on any given day.  I want to beat my time.  On Sunday, I really didn't care, I just wanted to finish the run.  And it felt great.  The moral to this story?  I have no clue.  If anyone actually reads this, maybe you can let me know.  What I do know is that sometimes just the satisfaction of getting something done is all that matters.