First Signs of Spring

No worries, no worries. The ankle (and knee) is fine now and Matt (the on-again smoker) will not have to pay with his life. Lucky him.

I ran for one smooth hour at the rec. center track today. I was actually this [--] close to running outside this morning, but I didn’t get the most comforting sleep last night (too much tossing and turning about work — on a Friday night, no less! — which is one of the things I try most in life to avoid) and just didn’t want to deal with the misery.

But the sunshine was so deceptive! This is the second week in a row I’ve allowed the sun to fool me into thinking it might be on the verge of Springing outside.

Last Saturday and today I’ve turned on my computer and, as weather.com loads, I say to myself, “If it’s 35 degrees or higher, I’m running outside.” I haven’t been so lucky. This morning wasn’t as bad as last weekend when it was ten degrees outside. Yuck.

I was thinking, however, that perhaps if I were to get a dog I could buck up and get outside even when I'm feeling blah. But I just tacked that onto the 7,149 other reasons I've compiled for getting a dog that still don't mean I'd be a good dog owner. Knowing my luck and rearing abilities, the pooch would be as wimpy as his ma and we'd just stay in bed all day long.

Back to the run: it’s different, for me, to just run for a time period. In fact, it’s kind of nice.
Rather than staying focused on counting my laps or making sure my iPod chip is tracking my miles correctly, I just started running and then stopped 60 minutes later.

After the initial warm up, my run was pretty even and, because I wasn’t counting distance, my body didn’t feel those landmark aches and pains like ankles at 4 miles, knees around 5 and thighs around 8. I may be onto something with my goal this month!

On my way home, however, I saw something incredible: a cyclist riding his bike down OH-59 in Kent. We don’t typically get any of those until around May — even then it’s a rare sight to behold.

The roads are still crusty with gray shoulder snow, so I won’t be as adventurous just yet. Although I took a peak at the local bike path, which appeared somewhat cleared, so I might hit the trails in the coming weeks if the temps break 50 degrees (I’m just not hardcore enough yet to go riding in anything cooler). Running on the trails for now might be a good back-up option and a nice change of scenery.

In less than one week, the St. Malachi race in Cleveland will be a beautiful change of pace and scenery for me. After today’s run I felt pretty secure with my ability to finish a 5-mile race (yes, I have severe confidence issues with my running abilities). But I will be happy to accept bad dreams about the hills near the Cuyahoga River, where the St. Malachi race is run, over the nightmares about work. Does anyone have some sort of holistic cure for work dreams?