change is good

mileage today: 15 (new distance record)

on the iPod: "if today was your last day" -- nickelback (go ahead and make fun...)

Most public school teachers love their job and abhor professional development. It typically involves copious amounts of meetings that are worthless in nature and mandatory in attendance. I will concede, however, that I do benefit from some of the information that is presented during professional development, but those nuggets are few and far between. To make things even less enjoyable this year, I had to sit through professional development on a Saturday morning. Clearly God is punishing me. This turn of events put my long run on a Sunday as opposed to the normal Saturday outing. I wasn't pleased about this on any level, but am pleased to report that things turned out a-okay. Change is good.

This also marked the return of running with Mrs. Murie and Mrs. Pugh, the two teachers who'll be with me for the Chicago Marathon. We had grandiose plans of getting together in July to do our long runs together, but summer happened and we ran solo, keeping each other informed on progress and bitching about the heat. Thanks, Arkansas. Why can't I live in Canada?

Beginning well before daylight, I was immediately struck by the quiet nature of darkness. It's so rare to be awake and cognizant of what is going on in the early morning hours. Lake Fayetteville was motionless from the levee as a sizeable breeze blew, keeping the August heat at bay. The clouds overhead were layered and distinctly separate from each other, rolling across the sky from west to east. Daybreak found a completely different feel to the run and I quickly found my groove, not for sure how I felt about running in darkness. It felt like being in unchartered territory. The change made me feel at home again.

We stopped at the White Oak Station on Gregg Street so that Mrs. Murie could pee. I needed energy and asked the cashier if I could have some Coke and come back and pay her later. A bit nervous to do it but totally craving sugar, I chugged about six ounces. We also stopped on the way back for another bathroom break, this time Mrs. Pugh, so I took advantage of the situation and chugged another four or five ounces. This time Mrs. Pugh loaned me money and I paid. The Coke was great. Really good. I'm thinking about changing from water to Coke on my long runs. In fact, I might only drink Coke from here on out. It'll be great from my teeth.

The miles continued to tick off, and, for a change, it was my legs that started to waver a bit as opposed to my energy. Thus far on long runs, i've fought off energy issues in the latter miles, but this morning my legs got heavy around mile twelve. It wasn't really all that bad, however, and I continued on.

Running with my fellow teachers again was great, but it continues to be a singular, reflective event for me. I get lost in my own thoughts, in pushing my body to a max level of endurance, and the art of taking in my surroundings without distraction. And there's the music, too. I so very much love to hear what comes around on my iPod and oftentimes will forget the distance ahead by getting pumped about what is in my ears. Particular artists do it more than others, the Dave Matthews Band comes to mind, but any song can change my emotion immediately.

A final note about the distance: I began to feel proud and elated about half-way through the run as I thought about the fact I was going a distance that i'd never gone before. I was, in essence, going beyond my self-ascribed title of "half-marathon runner". By going fifteen miles, I was becoming more than that. I liked the feeling and let it resonate. But change will continue in these next few weeks, as it always does, when the runs become 17, 18, and 20 miles. So each long run will, in some ways, be a reinvention of myself. That's so exciting. And as proud as I am of the 15 I ran today, there's really only one distance that matters. That's 26.2. And it's going to happen on October 10th in Chicago.