Friday, March 12, 2010

Real Life...


I’m realizing that running is absolutely not “real life”. Supporting that whole “living in-doors, eating food, paying tuition, attending band concerts, parent-teachers meetings” thing is real life… and it gets in the way of running. As a result, I’m finding that keeping a consistent training schedule is nearly impossible. I’ve had to bail on my lunch run twice this week to deal with some Air National Guard issues, so that leaves squeezing in a run right after work (not terribly successful yet), and a late night session on the treadmill (more successful, see photo of me watching "Claim" at 10pm). I have learned that the belt offers the advantage of being able to watch a movie while running, which in my case consists of a narrow bandwidth of ski-adventure films, “rockumentaries”, and Monty-Python. Simultaneously, it comes with the disadvantage of being… well… a treadmill.

The running thing is definitely laced with “reality” however. I’m slow, fairly old, and only marginally successful in completing races. And I’m definitely sore after training, let alone after race day, and there’s always that fact that when I finish a race, there’s about 55% of the pack ahead of me. With that in mind, I still get an incredible amount of satisfaction from running that has limited parity to anything in my real life.

With no first places in my future, what’s the point? As always, there is that challenge thing: “Can I do that?” And that seems to be rubbing off. My wife is pushing for her first half-marathon! Several of my co-workers are pushing for their firsts: Allen Steele is training like a mad-man for his first Tri. Chandler Childs is working towards his first marathon. Steve Proffit is looking towards his first half-marathon. Dan Eastman is returning to marathons after a long hiatus. How much of that was me? Probably not much, but even if I had a little bit of influence, then maybe there’s some point to my running. Real life aside, I’m a runner for life.

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