Upon waking this morning, I had a hard time deciding what I'd do for my run. Maggie wrote the other day about going through a rough time with wanting to run or enjoying her run. I commented to her, that is part and parcel of being a runner - you go through these love/hate cycles with running. This morning I could relate to her malaise. I decided that if I had to run, at least I'd try to enjoy the sites of Tinicum rather than trotting around the bowels of Delco.
It would be an out and back route along the boring part of the lower loop, similar to what I did a earlier this month. I have it on good authority that the interesting part is quite overgrown and with the rain we've had recently, I can only imagine that it is even more so.
The haze hung thickly over the reeds and marshy areas of Tinicum. Just another one of those gross summer mornings. Saw two full grown members of the Tinicum Track Club early on in my journey. They must have been feeling sluggish too because they let me get about twenty feet from them before cantering away. Of course zillions of bunnies abounded... and, really, that is only a slight exaggeration. At one point I had the image of popcorn popping as the bunnies seemed to pop out of the underbrush... one after the other.
The thing about the out and back run is the pressure to make the return trip quicker. Funny, two years ago, that concept didn't really occur to me. Today, like the saturated air, the tyranny of the return trip weighed upon me. I knew I'd be disappointed in my run - regardless of how I felt overall - if I did not shave a decent chunk of seconds off the second half of the run. I didn't want to... I kept thinking of Maggie and of not even wanting to run anymore... but then I also thought of not wanting to deal with feeling crappy about a slower second split.
So, of course, I picked it up a bit. It was hard, I was pretty much hating it. And, yes, mission accomplished. Somehow though, there was not much of a feeling of satisfaction... and it certainly was not equitable to the feeling of disappointment I know I would have experienced had I failed to achieve my goal. Such is the tyranny of running.
19:20 - out
18:11 - back
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Running the Numbers
2 comments:
Nice job on the negative split. That's a significant chunk of change difference.
I know what you mean about the tyranny of running. I feel like we should toss our running shoes into the Schuylkill or something.
You're a trooper!!! I can't decide if I motivated you or not...but it sounds like you have a beautiful area to run around...
Ran a bit farther today, and I enjoyed it a bit better, which made me happy. The last part was a little rough, so I opted to blow my eardrums out to Bon Jovi and just trance my way through the last bit...seemed to work. Now if only this buzzing sound would go away...
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