Run 31, 2008

First of all, I was at the Bushido Open Martial Arts Tournament in Sylvan Lake yesterday and I happened to start up a conversation with a man who, along with me, was watching a grappling match. I remember he said he used to be quite active in Ju Jitsu and was some sort of champion at one point. What I definitely do remember though, is asking him if he still did it. He said he was no longer active in this and replied something like, “At my age it takes too long to heal…”

He is right, of course, and I agreed with him. But in hindsight (which is often 20/20 for me) I would have liked to say to him:

“Yes, but how much time do you have left?” As if he did not have enough time left in his life to heal. So what if it takes us two months to recover as opposed to two weeks when we were younger? What else are we going to do with our time?

And now to my run report. Everybody and their dogs were at the bird sanctuary where I ran a trail portion today. The aroma (ok, stench) of the newly de-iced swamp was…intriguing. I ran 17 km today in 2:24:58 which is an 8:31 pace. A full minute slower than I like. I really felt like I could not finish, and took a lot of walk breaks. I was thinking of packing it in early (much early) and call MM to come pick me up, then I thought if I do that, what hope do I have to finish a marathon? So I sucked it up, said to hell with the poor time and finished it.

It was hot and windy! I could barely stand the heat and I ran out of sports drink. It was 22 degrees with gusty winds. I have to start running in the mornings when it is a reasonable 10 degrees or less. Besides, I can’t be wasting my whole day running, so I may as well get it over with early so I can get on with my day. I am still not 100% after the flu, but I am almost there.