Exercise Is Fun!

I awoke Saturday morning at 4 a.m., with a nice fat headache, after a fitful night's sleep due to excess worry about a certain relative of mine.

D.C. got the tail end of Ernesto. At 4 a.m. Saturday morning it was Dark. It was Cold. It was Raining. And I had 10 miles on the schedule, which I had upped to 12 because I have a marathon coming up people!! And this crazy schedule I'm on has two stepback weeks between long runs—only the stepback weeks are always 10 miles. That does not sound smart to me. Does it sound smart to you? So I thought I'd make one of those stepback weeks a 12 miler.

Except ... it was Dark. Cold. Raining.

On Friday, I had cleverly bought a rain jacket, cuz it was, you know, raining. It was on sale, marked down from $90 to $28. Score! So I wore that on Saturday, along with my running tights, cuz you know, it was cold.

Except ... it was 65 F. You know what they say: If you're comfy at the start of your run you will soon be too hot.

Bah! What do they know?

Off I drove to the Pentagon, wearing my snazzy new running rain jacket and long tights. Out of about 300 participants, maybe 30 showed up. I was very very cranky. The Other Jen, inexplicably chirpy, inexplicably wanted to run with me, and ended up dragging my sorry ass through the next nine miles. Did I mention I had a headache? I'm pretty sure I spent the entire two plus hours—soaked, and overheated—moaning and bitching. (It's fun running with me!) As usual, one of my fav topics was the weekly e-mail we get from our group leader. This week's e-mail contained a list of "11 mega-marathon mistakes," one of which was this:

Some marathoners actually think that walking during the race will improve their times. ... No one needs to walk during the marathon; we can all learn to run the entire distance—our times will not improve if we train to amble slowly during specific portions of the race.

Which I found to be a very strange thing for a group that encourages the run/walk method to put in its weekly e-mail. Do they actually read the stuff they send out? I dunno, but apparently no one else reads it either, since no one believed me when I was busy pointing out the total inconsistency of that message.

Not that I'm planning on run/walking. Or have anything against it. It got me through my first marathon. I'm just saying: If that's what you advocate, then stand up for it. Already.

Back to the hellish hot wet miserable run. Poor Jen. I feel for her. I didn't even want to run with me.

By mile nine I knew there was no way I was tacking on another two miles. What was I thinking? Ten miles was quite sufficient.

So on Sunday, to punish myself for being so cranky and miserable, I ran four miles. With the same headache. I told myself if running made my head hurt more, I'd stop. It didn't, so I kept going. Slowly.

Which brings us to today. Labor Day. A holiday. But I have my 6:30 a.m. spinning class on Monday morning. So, I woke up at 5:30, checked the center's Web site to make sure they were open. No mention of being CLOSED on Labor Day. I waited 'til 6 a.m., when I called to make triple-diple sure they were open. No one answered, but the message on the answering machine didn't mention that they were CLOSED, either.

Which, of course, they were. Which I found out after I got there.

Sigh.

I thought of running, but hadn't brought anything with me, like a watch or my shuffle or water, or anything.

So I got back in the car, drove to Starbucks, bought a decaf and the paper, and here I am.

The end.