Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Run Baby Run

I went running the other day. In the events preceding my bipedal excursion and during the run itself, I made a series of mistakes. Mistakes that cost me dearly. Let me tell you about it.

From the beginning, I decided to go running after a few things (including an undeserved loss in FIFA) angered me. That was mistake number one. Before embarking upon my journey, I neglected to fuel my body with food, or even water. Another mistake. I also neglected to bring music with me to help pace myself and block out distractions. Guess what? Mistake. Are you counting so far? (We're up to number three.)

By deciding to run under extreme duress and emotional imbalance, I didn't have the mental discipline necessary to pace myself the way I should have. Coming off a serious hamstring injury I've been pacing myself in my recovery, and angry running... not the thing to do. To make matters worse, I decided not to eat or drink before I left, so I had nothing to fuel my running but pure frustration. The first half mile went well until I ran into the bane of my existence when running: people.

For those who don't know me, I am an extremely competitive person. I can't stand to lose, come close to losing, or be perceived as a loser. For that reason, any time I come upon people during a run, I have to either pass them, or run at a ridiculous speed that I won't be able to keep up for more than a quarter mile.

My run was going according to plan until I ran into a man and two women walking on the side of the road. One of the women called out, "KEEP ON RUNNING BABY", further inflaming my competitive instinct. I increased my speed a bit, and gradually kept the acceleration going until I felt I was out of their sight. And then I hit "the wall". Let me rephrase that. Said wall hit ME. I immediately slowed down to a walk, and wasn't able to catch my breath for another half mile. I was finally able to hit a slow jog for the final quarter mile, but my lungs and pride were dealt an irreparable blow.

Next time I'm wearing blinders when I run.

2 comments:

aht4005 said...

Yo I feel you on all accounts, but I must admit when that women told u to keep on running that made me chuckle a lot! But yeah man, I had to wait until my ipod was fully charged and then i went running. i'm about to go running but i'm going to be happy that Barcelona won.

Mr. Pibba said...

hahaha, yep, dude, I'm EXACTLY the same way. sometimes I find myself racing bikers or slowly moving cars. always with predictably bad results.