September 2006 Archives
I'll post my recent progress reports soon, today I have an exciting tale that all runners can relate to. Pictures are worth a thousand words so I have rendered my experiences in glorious Microsoft Paint as well.
There is one busy intersection that I cross on most of my long runs. Usually at intersections I'll just go with traffic and not worry about the "Walk" button, but at this one I do - it's just a little extra-busy and I feel more comfortable knowing that the white neon man says it's okay for me to cross.
The intersection has two right-turn lanes on the side I was coming from this morning. I was crossing the first lane (courtesy of White Neon Man) as a car started moving up in the second lane.
The blue arrow is the direction I'm moving. The red arrows show (a) which direction the car wants to go and (b) which direction the driver is looking.
It all happened very fast, but all of a sudden there I was off the front right fender of this car. He was making no attempt to stop and so I reached out with both hands and pounded on the hood of his car, while yelling "HEY! HEY!"
Not particularly original but it's what came to me in the moment.
Here's what he saw:
He stomped on the brakes. Here's what I saw:
The car did not touch me but my heart raced up to around 90% of max anyway. (Fight or flight, anyone?) Try though I may, I couldn't get my heart rate down for the rest of today's run.
Frankly, I hope I scared the piss out of that guy. And it wouldn't upset me too much if I scratched his paint with my wedding band. Moron.
Week 10. This was a big week in my mind.
The 15 mile weekend run was a big hurdle to get over - I'm really starting to worry about reinjuring my knee. I did my long slow run on Sunday, cautiously noting each muscle twinge and knee jolt - and two days later it seems that thus far I've done no irreparable damage. The midweek runs were 3-7-4 this time, and frankly it's getting tough to get up early enough on Wednesday morning to get my run in before leaving for work.
My weight dropped a little this week - I'm down to 208. I predict that will soon change, however...
Tomorrow I leave on a nine-day business trip. It's similar to a trip I took last year that knocked a 10-day hole in my training plan. I don't think it's a coincidence that I ran once in ten days and then hurt my knee the next week trying to get back on schedule.
This year I started my training plan a week early, so I have an extra week to play with. It seems unlikely that I'll be able to work in a 16 mile run while I'm at a convention, so I'm planning to do three or four shorter runs during the week and then picking it up when I get back next weekend. I needed to give back a week anyway, and this will put me on schedule for November.
(Of course I'm sure I'll continue to lose weight while eating out three meals a day and going out for drinks every night for nine days. Sure I will, yeah, no problem...)
