Notes
An awesome solo run, and a huge triumph of athletic willpower over my surprisingly strong inner baby... With M still convalescing over the last bits of her recent cold/flu, I opt today to honor the opportunity (and daylight) for a long-ish weekend run. Especially since now she, I, and Gwen have plans to run the Colchester Half-Marathon in February, keeping up with my distances seems a wise plan, and I'm also just digging the chance to go out and cover some ground...
Fighting bitter cold winds and feeling woefully under-dressed without my hat and gloves, it's not until around C.C.'s that I begin to feel any sort of body heat rise, and even from there on up to Morgan Street, then Fuji, then R.J.'s Diesel, then the Compound, itself, every opportunity to cut my run short is conclusively decided on in my mind - There are plenty of good reasons for turning back and I'm simply not going to do the full 10-miler today. Yet somehow my feet keep going, and I find myself a little further down the road. Finally, continuing on past the Compound, I can't help but smile at myself with a muttered "You bastard" realizing just how well my sense of duty/commitment played me and kept us all moving towards our goal - Thanks hugely for that, especially in retrospect...!
With the mental work of the first half done, my return back into Pawcatuck is an utter thrill, and I find myself so relieved and unencumbered from the accomplishment that my automatic "pendulum" running pretty much just carries me home. Up until Yardney I feel like I could run for another 10 miles, and even at that point, as I begin to feel small amounts of tightness in both thighs, my running stays strong and steady. Reaching the finish a few minutes later is almost anti-climactic, and as I walk the victory stretch home, the feeling of being able to run what I just did with such an unbelievable minimum of effort, exhaustion, or pain is simply awesome...