Mid-day run

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. On iChat, Rob said: “Twilight isn’t until 6:30, dawn isn’t until 6:50.” Then he asked if we could go running later in the day.

Well, okay. But just this once.

Generally, I like to get my exercise out of the way early in the day, so that I will be sure to do it. Also, I am terribly selfish and want to use my kids-in-school time for something like writing. But the writing has really sucked recently, and I hoped that, as has been promised by so many people extolling the benefits of exercise, a mid-day run might spur me on to great thoughts.

(I actually deserve a prize for the amount of exercise I do, given that I get few to none of the benefits claimed by it. Weight loss? Ha, I’m doing 15-20 hard miles a week, up and down hill trails, and my weight hasn’t budged. Energy? Exercise makes me tired. Very, very tired. So tired, in fact, that a doctor made me go get blood work, because he said, “No, it’s supposed to invigorate you.” I’m now on thyroid medication. I still get tired during runs though.)

We met at Rancho San Antonio, a simply gorgeous nature preserve. We have our “usual” run there, which is about 4.5 miles and involves running up a hill. (You can use the Rancho Runner and plug in “1aef3upstu3fea1” to check out our run.) Usually when I exercise in the middle of the day it’s in a nice indoor gym, cooled by fans at the very least. But this was outside at 11:30, sunny, warm but not too warm. I warned Rob to expect a not-great run: “We’re not going to be able to do this in our usual hour and two minutes. Just so you know.” My other excuse, at the ready, was that I had just walked a mile and a half taking Sophia to school.

We started off and my legs felt like they were made of lead. I thought, I’m going to have to ask him to do the short 3 mile run. (Yes, I’m actually at the point where five miles is the default and three miles is light. Woot.) I didn’t get any peppier on the way up, although I was able to wait for our walking breaks (going up the hill we do four minutes running, one walking) and not make my own, the way I have, er, once or twice in the past. I did apologize to Rob for going slower than your average garden snail on the way up and he said, “Enh. I’m not in this for the speed record.”* Rob has been having an easier and easier time with our runs, because over the past couple of months he’s dropped 43 pounds, mostly due to the liquid diet he’s on, but also because he’s become Exercise Boy — he does these three runs a week, plus takes a three day-a-week exercise class at the Fitness Center.

We got up to the top and then began the long run down. We don’t take walking breaks on the way down because, well, gravity’s doing its part and we feel obligated to take advantage of it. I thought I’d need a walk when we reached the bottom, but instead we kept going. Several times during the mile back to the parking lot I found myself thinking, “I can’t do this. I need to walk. In just a second, I’m going to ask for a walking break.” But I didn’t, and soon we were back at the bridge to the parking lot.

Rob looked at his watch. “You were right. We didn’t make a hour two.”

“What was it?” I expect

“An hour one.”

Wow.

I mean, I felt like hell after that run, but evidently we’d done even faster than we ever had before.

And even if I don’t get anything else done today — and, to be honest, it’s kind of looking like I won’t — at least I’ve done that.

* – Not a direct quote. Where other people are concerned, they rarely are, to be honest.