Success......Barely

I opted to go for the 6 mile run on Friday instead of running the race.

It would have been nice to run the race, since I don't have a lot of opportunities to run smaller races. Most of them are on Saturday mornings, and I'm always at work.

But, it looked like we could end up having another storm....... which we did. And I didn't want to get caught in it. The storm was nice enough to wait until the race would have finished, but I would have ended up driving the 30 minutes home in a torrential down pour.

Plus, I felt like running the race would have been a cop out....... an "acceptable" excuse to avoid the 6 miles, but an excuse never the less.

So, I gritted my teeth and decided on the 6 miles.

I decided to run on the treadmill to avoid the aforementioned storm.

The run started out not too bad. I was running a pretty slow comfortable pace, trying to conserve some energy for the end of the run.

During the first few miles, I finished the end of the movie, "The Butterfly Effect", which I had started watching a few days before.

Anyone out there seen that movie? I saw it in the theaters when it came out, and really liked it. Mostly because I think it is very thought provoking, not because it has great acting!

I had never watched the director's cut. So, I wanted to see the different ending. I think I liked the director's cut ending better, but it was a little disturbing and I understand why they didn't release it like that.

Anyway, back to the run....

When I run on the treadmill, I always take a towel and cover up the display panel. I don't want to watch the miles tick by one slow tortuous .01 mile at a time. And I don't want to see how dreadfully slow I am going. So, I avoid the torture by hiding it from sight.

The movie finished and I took a peek under the towel to see where I stood, and had gone about 2 miles. So, at that point I put in my ear phones and listened to some new tunes that I had put on my mp3 player.

So, I'm cruising along doing great at that point, and decided to speed up a little bit.

I'm just running a long and I'm sweating like mad. I grab the towel to wipe the sweat out of my eyes and unfortunately glance at the display and see that I have gone 2.87 miles.

"2.87?!?! You lying sack of @$#%. I know I've ran farther than that."

"I'm going to die."

"I'm not going to make it 6 miles."

"I'm going to fail again."

"No, you aren't!"

"You are going to keep running, until that display says 6 miles or the treadmill flings you off the back and you go crashing through the window behind you."

And that's what I did for 3.13 miles.

Cursing the entire time.

And when I was done, I felt like I had just conquered the world.

And was reminded just why I do this.

Bring on that next long run, baby.


Success of a different kind...

Thank you so much to everyone who sent letters to Matthew at camp. He received 65 pieces of mail, and broke his record by one letter. Sounds like he got to visit the lake many times. So, a huge huge thank you to all of you. If you want to read more details, head on over to his site.