Another Enjoyable Sunday

Saturday morning's run started out a LOT tougher than I thought it was going to be. The wind was blowing down the canyon with evil determination and sadistic glee. And my ancient and decrepit body, with all its internal heat being stripped off, was abnormally reluctant to function. For the first mile, everything hurt. My knees, ankles, muscles -- they all were firmly in agreement that it was NOT a good morning for a run. My hands were frozen, even though I had them tucked into my shirtsleeves, and my nose and ears felt like they were covered with icicles. The wind stabbed like Norman Bates, and there were patches of treacherous ice on the road. I seriously thought about turning around and trying to run after work instead. But I somehow talked myself into doing two miles uphill (walking if I had to), just so I'd be forced to cover a total of 4 by the time I returned to the car. Then I could at least say that I did something.

My discomfort didn't diminish a whit during the second mile. But despite my hands feeling frozen, I realized that they weren't in danger of frostbite, and weren't getting any worse, so I decided to just keep going. Maybe if I forced myself to go to the dam, I'd feel better about the whole fiasco, no matter how badly I sucked. At least a 10K would count to burn off my breakfast calories, even if I did walk the whole thing.

After 25 minutes of puffing and panting, cursing and groaning, and making plans to burn all of my running gear, I finally reached the 2-mile stick. And it was right around there that the wind let up for a bit. So I tried to concentrate on my form (slow as it was) and keep putting one foot in front of the other. I made it to the 3-mile mark, and then started to actually feel better. I decided to try to make it to 4.

And that's all it took -- three miles of warmup; then I was fine. My hands warmed up, my ankle got loose, and my attitude improved tremendously as I began to feel human again. Because it had taken me so long to get that far, though, I still decided to turn around at 4.5, so that I could make it to work on time.

I don't know my exact splits, but I'll bet that I negative split the run by something like 10 minutes. I felt SO much better on the way down, and with the strong wind pushing me, I was covering ground a lot faster, too. The only problem was that I'd still occasionally start trying to speed up past my "spaz point", and my left hammie would shriek at me until I slowed down. But I felt so strong! I didn't want to go slow!

The best news, though, is that I ran the entire final mile in what I would call my "real runner" mode (hardly limping at all), and felt good. I got my heart rate up to 170, and was cranking along pretty good. I'm sure an outside observer would still be tempted to call an ambulance if they saw me, but I felt like I was freakin' Forrest Gump.

I probably should have run another couple of miles, but I really did need to get to work. I took a nice hot shower at RDL, changed into my work clothes, and then sat down at my desk to process the artwork that was waiting. I felt pretty good, and ended up having a great Saturday at the office.

One bit of bad news, though -- I learned late Saturday afternoon that there would be no swim practice on Sunday morning, due to a gas leak that affected the heaters at the pool. That meant I'd have to find some other way to exercise on Sunday morning.

So Sunday morning, I decided to go out to Red Rocks and run some stairs. The weather was decent and there was a pretty good crowd of folks up there. Most of them were working out, too. (I love living in a place where so many people like to stay in shape!)

I ran up six times, which I figured was about the same number of steps I'd have to cover in the Run the Republic race next month. (Of course, in that race, I won't get to go back downhill 5 times in the middle of the run. It'll be a LOT tougher.) I figured that was just about the right amount to make me just a little bit sore, but not crippled. We'll find out later if I guessed correctly.

After doing the steps, I jogged a bit more inside the park to loosen up my legs, and then went home for a quick shower. At 1:30, I went over to pick up Tanner and the two of us went out to lunch.

As you probably know, I think that my son is one of the smartest guys around. His intellect and talent are truly impressive...and I've heard enough other people agree to think that it's not just my parental pride talking. But that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes get frustrated with his teenage pigheadedness. It's my job to offer life advice to the young man, of course...and having collected far more life experience than he has, I feel qualified to provide direction and encouragement that would make his journey to adulthood much smoother and more productive. But being a teenager, he has an instinctive need to refuse my advice and proceed down his own path. Our lunchtime discussion was enjoyable, but didn't result in the meeting of the minds that I'd hoped for.

Oh well, I suppose that every parent goes through that...and that all children eventually realize that their folks weren't quite as muddle-headed as the kids once thought. But in the meantime, I find myself doing the same old clichéd expressions of parental frustration that everyone does -- banging my head against the wall and wailing to the sky, saying "Where did I go wrong?"

Sigh.

The good news is that even though he hasn't yet learned to make every single decision in accordance with his father's nearly-infinite wisdom, he's at least still willing to discuss things with me...and then go play tennis afterward. So we had an excellent lunch, and then bopped over to the tennis courts to knock some balls around. And let's face it -- any day where I can run stairs, eat like a pig, and then still chug around on a tennis court with my son is a good day, indeed.

I hope you had an enjoyable weekend as well. Keep smiling, my friends!