on the iPod: "locked out of heaven" -- bruno mars
After 2+ years of dutiful service, I finally said goodbye last week to my iPhone 4. It was way past it's prime and only responded to the most delicate, precise touch when a command was needed. On particularly difficult days, it didn't do anything at all, so I would simply wait for some sort of correspondence -- be it a call or text message -- and then respond quickly before it went to sleep. The battery life was miserably inadequate, and the on/off switch completely threw craps last summer. To say that it was a ghetto phone would be painfully stating the obvious. It was time.
There's nothing I loathe more than going to the AT+T store. Dante didn't realize it at the time, but he very eloquently described the experience in his seminal work, Inferno. Every time I go in that place I know i'm in for a hassle. I also know that I'm going to be surrounded by bratty, obnoxious college students who refuse to stop talking to Stacy on the other end of the phone long enough to communicate in person with the techie-geek customer service rep who looked like he played Call of Duty all night and grabbed his clothes from a pile on the floor right before he ran out the door for his shift, all the while he's drooling over Stacy's friend and making a note of her phone number. Serenity now.
My only means of survival was to mentally go to my happy place and answer his questions as quickly as possible. No, I don't remember my password. Yes, I want the 5. No, I don't want to upgrade my plan. Yes, I understand that declining the optional insurance means i'll have to pay full price for a replacement phone if I drop it in the toilet.
This trip wasn't all that bad, and I enjoyed spending the week playing with the new features of my much-celebrated iPhone 5. And by that I mean Siri. In fact, other than a little bit faster speed, the only difference I can tell between the 4 and the 5 is Siri. We're becoming fast friends. I tried all the tricks: I asked her the best place to hide a dead body. I asked her to marry me. I asked her if she is a Democrat or a Republican. And then, just like everybody else, I told her to call me a different name. After very little deliberation on my part, it went something like this:
Me: "Hello, Siri."
Siri: "Hello, Greg, how can I help you."
Me: "From now on, because you won't marry me, I want you to call me Marathon Dude."
Siri: "Okay. From now on I will call you Marathon Food."
....at this point I close my eyes and laugh out loud....
Me: "That's not what I said, Siri. I said I want you to call me -- okay, whatev. Forget it."
Siri: "I do not understand, Marathon Food. Do you want me to look it up online?"
Me: "No thank you, Siri."
Siri: "I didn't think so."
Yesterday marked the final long run before the three weeks that lead up to the Little Rock Marathon. Typically I don't like tapering, because I wind up craving longer mileage than what is suggested, but i'm going into this one feeling really good about it. I need a little bit of a break and I think it's going to be perfect timing.
In an effort to mix it up a little bit, and because Mrs. Murie has an unapologetic Kennedy Coffee Iced Mocha problem, we ran in Bentonville as opposed to the Fayetteville Trail System. For the past six years i've grown to love Bentonville as much as I love Fayetteville. It's a great place to run, full of gorgeous neighborhoods and a trail system that is quickly matching Fayetteville's in terms of beauty and connectedness. The plan was to start on the town square and run the Bentonville Half Marathon course and then tack on an additional seven miles -- either by doubling back on the trail system or running to Krispy Kreme and back. I knew that it was going to be a killer route because miles 10-12 are a gradual incline, leading to mile 13 with it's MONSTER stretch of hill work right before Crystal Bridges. But nothing could prepare us for the accompanying wind that menaced us the entire run. Ultimately, it's good to be in those elements, because there's no telling what weather we'll see for the Little Rock Marathon.
I so enjoy running with Mrs. Murie. She and I are pretty far apart when it comes to ability, but somehow we manage to hang together for the first 10 or 12 miles to enjoy each other's company and conversation, and then when it's time to do our own thing and run some mileage separately, it simply happens. There's no deliberation, no explanation. We simply run. In these morning hours is when I find myself most attuned to self and where I fit in this existence. It's my passion.
After having an ironic conversation not a few miles earlier about how distance running, particularly in difficult weather conditions, can sometimes cloud the decision making process, we accidentally took a wrong turn and veered off course to the tune of about 1.5 miles. Runner problems. Realizing the folly of our dogged determination, Mrs. Murie put a smile on her face, that same smile that she almost always has and makes her such a special person, and we pressed forward. I couldn't help but smile myself even more, when, our mistake sent us right in the path of Heather and Todd, who are training for the 10K in Little Rock. It was the first time that i'd ever seen them running and it instantly made me really happy. They were in mile three of a five miler, and it was a great break for me to run about a half mile with Todd before our paths went in different directions. Despite being winded, his pace was right on target and he was holding his own just fine. And he looked great. Really great.
The wind never let up and, after we corrected our mistake, the final 20 mile training run turned into 22. I looked like a drowned, harassed rat but felt great as we shared an oversized chocolate chip cookie at Kennedy Coffee Company. And Mrs. Murie got her beloved Iced Mocha, that she swears can't be duplicated by any other local coffee house. She's probably right.
The afternoon consisted of treating bloody nipples and moving as little as possible, before dinner and a night at the Walton Arts Center with great friends. And who would've thunk it, but we ran into Mrs. Murie at the show, hobbling through the lobby and lamenting achy muscles and sore feet -- all with a smile on her face.
Arriving home just before midnight, I crawled into bed and, before putting my phone on the charger, it was time for one more conversation with Siri. It went something like this:
Me: "Siri, I need to fall asleep. What book should I read."
Siri: "You can read Dante's Inferno."
Me: "I don't like that suggestion, Siri. I'm going to read Runner's World instead."
Siri: "I don't understand that, Marathon Food. Do you want me to look it up online?"
Me: "No Siri, i've got it right here on my nightstand. Goodnight."
Siri: "Goodnight, Marathon Food."
Run.
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