Saturday, February 8, 2014

Just run

This is my I-finished-my-ten-mile-run-despite-it-being-freezing-ass-cold-and-my-phone/GPS/music-player-dying-two-miles-in-face:
You get this since I couldn't take any run pictures
It was cold today. Balmy compared to most parts of the country, but it was mid-30s and I'm a baby and I just wasn't having it. I knew I had this run to do, my first real "long run" in my marathon training, and by about 1PM I had run out of ways to procrastinate. So I put on my shorts, trudged to my treadmill, started to plod, and within two minutes asked myself WTF I was doing on a treadmill when it there was daylight and the roads were dry. I have a hate-hate relationship with the treadmill in my house, and I knew I'd maybe get three miles in, max, before calling it a day. On went my running tights, long-sleeves, and gloves, and out the door I went. 

Feeling good, rocking out to Pandora, RunKeeper app politely letting me know my distance and pace every five minutes, and then... nothing. My phone is also a baby about the cold, and decided to feign illness and shut down. You guys, I actually thought about going home. I was already feeling naked without my GPS watch and heart rate monitor, and to have no idea how fast I was going, when I was supposed to turn around, and no Ellie Goulding to distract me, was not motivating.

But for some reason I kept going - I figured I'd just turn around when I got bored and hopefully I'd make it to six or seven miles. I'd run the route probably 100 times before, so I vaguely knew the distance from my house to certain checkpoints. 

Surprisingly though (for me) I just kept running. I listened to the pat-pat-pat of my shoes on the pavement, the wind rustling through the trees, I noted how my body was feeling, how my pace changed when I shortened my stride. I raced against oblivious joggers and challenged myself to run to random objects in the distance. 

Once I felt like I had made it at least four miles, I turned around and ran home, listening, looking, racing, thinking, mentally singing my latest favorite Ellie-song in my head. 

Got home, chugged some water and stretched my hips, then plotted my route in GoogleMaps to check the distance. I turned around right at 5.2 miles, putting my total at 10.4! 

So, lesson for me and for you, is that sometimes you just need to run, and you don't actually *need* much to do it. I had become so dependent on music and monitors and trackers over the years that I had forgot to just enjoy running and the places it takes me. I'm not saying that I'll chuck the music and GPS on every run from now on, but I will make a point to just run every once in a while. 


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