Archives for April 2006

The sun made a visit to California today. It was glorious outside. I was tempted to run my mid-week run of 8 miles. But I was a good girl and I ran only 4 miles. I decided to run without music today, so it was me and my breathing again. It started out rough, but I was moving along at a good clip. After a mile or so, I settled into a good pace.

As I ran, I saw a lot of new faces. There were runners out all over the trails. I might add that there has not been many runners out in the previous months of rain, rain, rain. Today, however, the men were running shirtless – they were showing off the fact that they had NOT been running for the past many rainy months. Ugh! I was warm, but I wasn’t hot. There are some things that you just don’t need to see.

Although I HAVE been running, whether rain or shine, I left MY shirt ON. I am certain that the world appreciates it.

It’s Patriot’s Day and try as I might to keep up with the goings on in Boston, I had work to do. The protocol that I had been spending 98% of my time on during the past week was finally signed off today and can go to the next step of committee review. I made the final edits, updated the hyperlinks, and touched up the formatting through lunch time.

I hate it when one project can take over so drastically, that nothing else matters while I am working on it. Not breakfast, lunch, not even to go to the bathroom.

By 1:45 p.m. it was complete. I sent it off, for the last time, to welcome comments. In my email I stated that I would be in the fitness center. Finally I got a break to clear my mind of work, and let it fill with meaningless propaganda of television.

I got the remote control and set the TV for NBC. It was time for “Passions” ~ a strange, but entertaining SOAP that I often watch (We have a family member acting on the show). So there I was spinning on the cycle, reading the captions, and trying to block out the load music that was playing.

It is a cross training day. As Hal Higdon puts it, today was supposed to be ?a day of relative rest?. I decided that I would spin with some resistance, but not a lot during the show. Then, with each commercial break I would get out of the saddle for a standing climb. By the end of the 45 minutes that I was there, my legs were telling me that this was not really rest, but perhaps a pretty good workout.

The show is chalk full of broken hearts, witches, men lurking in the shaddows with knifes, and of course a full bolus of PASSIONate scenes. Watching Noah & Fancy, Chris & Sheridan, and all of the other quirky characters was “just the thing” on a hard work day. It was just a nice break from reality to a, sometimes really bizarre, very dramatic daytime show.

Later in the evening, I tried to tune into OLN for my Boston Marathon fix. I asked Cindy to TiVo the coverage for me, but I wanted to see it sooner. Poor calculations on my part; I saw that the repeat coverage was to occur at 5 p.m. When I considered that the posted time was EST, I figured the coverage would be at 8 p.m. (instead of 2 p.m. PST) For now, all I have are the few photos that were posted to the Boston website.

It was another Saturday morning where I didn’t hop out of bed to run. I just wanted to lie in bed and enjoy the quiet morning. Everyone was asleep, I was nearly asleep too. I looked out the bedroom window and was surprised to see blue skies. There were rain clouds in the sky too, but I just didn’t look in that direction. How can one be unhappy on a sun filled day?

But the sun didn’t last. Within an hour of my setting my feet to the floor, there were sprinkles of raindrops falling. I should have run earlier, but I didn’t. I just didn’t feel like it.

After a baseball game where my 7 year old got to pitch to the last batter before the 5 run rule ended the game, I made my way to running errands. It would be a bit before I’d be able to get away for a run.

By 4:30 p.m. I was heading out for a 12 mile run. Running down the running/bike path with the river flowing along side of me. The water was moving fast, and caught my attention. It was as if the water was challanging me to a race. I ran swiftly but kept in mind that I had a long road ahead of me, not to mention the return trip.

It was cool and cloudy, but the sun was actually out. I noticed that I was happy today to run alone. This was different from last week when the long run felt lonely and isolated. I listened to my music ~ its beat kept my turnover quick. And as I ran I fell into relaxation. I let my body release the pent up energy from a hard work week, and imagined the sun refueling my body.

The run wasn’t all easy; my right foot hurt at the ball of my foot. I took my shoe off and rubbed my foot at mile 10. Resuming my run, I became aware of my legs aching. I was tiring and my pace was slowing. But in wasn’t long before I happily stopped running after a 12.3 mile run.