The morning after

I’m a little creaky today.  I’m a little tired.  I don’t feel bad, mind you, I’m just a little creaky.  Things aren’t as responsive as they should be…  I think “lift leg over puppy gate” and my leg says “what now?  Oh, that, right” and then gets on with it.  It’s a slight hesitation, but a hesitation nonetheless.  All in all, I feel pretty darned good.

 

I tried something a little different yesterday.  A buddy of mine (I’ll refer to him as “Tom” since that’s his name) busted his hip a little over a year ago.  Nobody knows what’s wrong with his hip, but I suspect he’s faking it to get out of mowing the lawn.

Anyway, with the busted hip he can’t run.  Some guys have all the luck.

Unfortunately, he can’t do enjoyable sports like cycling or swimming, either, so triathloning is out for him, too.  So, I cut him a deal.  In order to reduce the number of miles I was going to run and kick a few miles in his direction that he can’t run on account of the hip thing, I’d run 4 miles on his behalf.  That would make my 10 mile run into a 6 mile run for me, and a 4 mile run for Tom. 

 

Brilliant, if I do say so myself. 

 

His 4 miles yesterday were basically the 2 or 3 leading out to Waugh (not the overpass, I take the hills myself), the few feet from Waugh to the fountain, then I took over from Waugh to Sheperd (more hills), and then he rounded out his 4 along Memorial on the way back to the park.  All in all, it worked.  I got my miles in, they were all under 10:00, and I felt pretty good at the end.  What’s really cool is that at the 1m marker my time was exactly 9:45.  My overall time was something like 9:30 per mile, so I actually got faster as the run went on and some of the miles had to be below the 9:30 mark in order to make up for the 9:45 first mile.  I’m still pretty geeked up.

 

Of course, what Tom doesn’t know is that I’m expecting him to pay me back those 4 miles in January…  plus interest.  I hope he remembers to bring his running shoes to church that day.

If anyone else wants to swap some miles now for miles in January, give me a jangle.  I’m sure we can work something out.