Words of wisdom

You know those runs that seem to drain every last bit of energy out of you? You're barely shuffling your feet. You're huffing and puffing like you have a house to blow down. And worst of all you're about two steps away from becoming a walker. But then your favorite song comes on! And your inner runner comes sprinting out from the depths of your determination!

Well, my friends, that did not happen to me yesterday. My iPod crashed and after 40 minutes of fiddling with it I decided I needed to get a move on. So I ran unplugged. I ran like it was 1999.

I'll tell you what did happen to me though. I missed a turn. I didn't know I missed a turn, but I knew I screwed something up when I reached a dead end. I had to make a decision and fast. I couldn't stop running. Left or right. I panicked. I didn't think. I took a left.

As soon as I took that left my inner dialogue turned to, "Ohhhh shit." I was running downhill. Fast. Too fast. This hill was capital S-T-E-E-P, which only meant one thing. I would have to run back up that same hill. And running up that hill felt like the first paragraph of this post.

The only thing that kept me going was a conversation I happened to have had with a co-worker earlier in the day about running in Benicia. "You have to run hills if you want to run anything longer than 1 mile." And he had said, "Yep. Good for the gluts." So I thought about my glorious gluts and made it up the hill. Thanks to Sergio.

Sergio may have carried me up the hill, but Kelsea brought me to the finish line. After repeat run-throughs of the hip hop dance this week I started to feel nauseous. I sat down and told Kelsea, "I'm beat. I'm going to sit this one out." To which she replied, "Get up. This is where you burn." (Firewood? No. Fat.) So I thought about Kelsea's words of wisdom and all the fat I was burning off my glorious gluts when I started to feel my pace slip.

The results? 3.32 miles. 32:50 minutes.