Most people go on vacation to get out of a daily routine. If you don’t, I sure as heck do. I yearn for that disruption in the daily routine for weeks on end leading up to a hiatus in the mountains or on the beach or with my sister. Then the actual disruption comes, and it’s like a slap in the face. I want my crappy schedule back, the boring routine. Of course, I enjoy the vacation and the new scenery for a couple of days, but that’s the extent of it.
Seriously? Why would I want to have back my schedule of a 515am wake up time on Tuesday to make a 10 miler at McAlpine? Why would I want back my 7am wake up (on the weekend!!) for a 730am long run of over 14 miles? Even when the running trails are 1003403x better than the trails in Charlotte, NC, I want back home so that I can run on the Charlotte trails.
The reason I bring this up is because Jay and I ran yesterday at 130pm. The sun was shining, the temperature was a whole twenty degrees warmer than when we typically run (I didn’t even need gloves), and we had half the day to laze around. Any sane person would assume that we felt fan-friggin-tastic for this mid-afternoon frolic in Freedom Park. Nope. As John Compton likes to say, our legs felt like “garbage.” Like they had been thrown into the dumpster, tossed around a bit, and thrown back into the streets for a bus to roll over them. We mused that our bodies were just used to running at the extremes: either early in the morning or late in the evening. I wonder if there is any scientific evidence that proves our bodies grow accustomed to a scheduled workout time.
So – is it the fact that we are runners who plan their races for December 2010 in January of 2010 that we want our routine back? Is it the fact that we obsess over our weekly mileage and whether or not we will still make that while on vacation?
I’ve got my own answer. I just love running so darn much. So much, in fact, that I’ve become accustomed to a schedule that includes waking up before the sun comes up and finishing a run before that same sun comes up…and enjoying (mostly) every moment of it. It’s pretty nice to get done with a run before 8 or 9am and still have the rest of day to yourself on the weekend.
1 comments:
hmm, so your theory is you run best at stupidly early hours of the monring in the cold winter? It's all starting to make sense... Unfortunately for me that's when my enture body feels like a garbage like Oscar the Grouch. Maybe you could train yourself to run in pleasant conditions also (please please please)?
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