Started 8:30am. Ran fourteen kilometers, long slow distance at 7:14 min/km, completed 1hr 43mins. Beautiful sunny cold weather, started on Lakeshore, ran past Oakville Town Centre, then my old grade school on Sixth Line and old high school on McCraney. Felt fantastic after about 11km.
Off to take Dad his lunch. Hope you all survived St. Patty’s with minimal hangover damage.
How do you keep yourself from becoming completely bored? If only I could read while I ran…
I don’t do cardio for as long as Pipes runs, but I know that I can’t do *anything* without tunes. It’s amazing how much music keeps me going. I need new stuff though, because I started running on a treadmill lately (instead of elliptical…needed a change) and I need music at a slightly different tempo. I used to go for marathon horseback rides when I was a teenager (my horse April and I would take off down the road for like 3 hours at a time), and I’m not sure how I stayed non-bored. I think I was angsty and just thought a lot.
That’s the problem – too much thinking and after a while I’m just, get me away from my brain! 😀
I have to do long runs with a group, and part of the pacing exercise to keep us from running too fast and burning out is to keep talking.
Today I talked with my friend Rick about how he met his wife skiing and how he thinks I should try to date a runner because if I date a couch potato it’ll affect my mileage and I’ll resent that I’m fit and they’re not and he also spent about 30 minutes trying to talk me into joining a ski club to meet guys (all of my fellow runners are married, so they all pitched in on this topic, since they believe it is a travesty that I’m not only single but in fact not even dating). Personally, I’d be happy to date a couch potato. It’s worked just fine for me in the past.
There are any number of popular running discussion topics, ranging from old battle stories from the ex-marathoners to favourite pairs of shoes and what people like to eat and then after a few weeks of running with strangers you become like war buddies, brought together through pain and adversity, and you start actually talking about your lives and movies you like and books you’ve read.
No way am I doing next Sunday’s 16km run all by myself (sadly, is unlikely to want to join me for a leisurely 8:30am jog from West Broadway and Granville all the way to Stanley Park) so I’m going to try and hook up with the West Broadway Running Room half-marathon group and run with them. I’ll keep you posted as to how I enjoy running around English Bay goes!
Oh, also, two other things:
1) Run outside. In Oakville, at least, it means beautiful views of trees and water. In the city, it means pretty houses and looking out for traffic.
2) If you’re thinking, you’re not running fast enough. Your brain should only be thinking “oxygen! oxygen! when is the next walk break! oxygen!”
I may have passed you in my car while you were on the 6th line leg of your trip behind WOSS.
My in-laws live over that way, and that’s around the time (10:00-10:15) I was heading there.