[Sorry for the blitz of posts. I’d like to space them out more, but when I find a block of time, I’ve just got to go with it.]
I finally left the office at 8pm this evening. I’d intended to leave by 6:30, but since I took tomorrow as a vacation day, I had to stay to get done those few projects that can’t wait until Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, 8 PM traffic over the bridge — both automobile and pedestrian — was just as heavy as when I run over the bridge at 6:30 PM.
Can’t tell you how long the run home took me today because I forgot to pack my watch this morning. As a runner, this is slightly embarassing. Running without a watch is either very Zen or completely un-serious–both, in my opinion, worthy of embarassment. Despite my harsh attitude towards watchless running, I seem to forget my watch ofen enough that I should probably lighten up, at least for my own sake. Most notably, I left my watch on the extra bed in my hotel room the morning of the Disney World Marathon this January. 26.2 miles, no watch. Luckily my time goals were straightforward. It seems that I forget my watch when I break my routine, which I did this morning, having to creep around Husband, who was still in bed (no school on Easter Monday).
But, as much as I like to be sarcastic about Zen runners, I have to admit it’s a not-altogether unpleasant experience when I run without my watch. I suspect that had I been wearing my watch at the Disney World Marathon, the last five miles would have been so interminable and unbearable I’d have stopped to walk. But, without my watch to glance at, I kept trucking, deluding myself that the next mile-marker was just past the next highway exit ramp (it wasn’t). During my watch-wearing runs home from work, when I’m forced to pull up at red lights (this happens every several blocks), I think the whole time about all the seconds it’s costing me. But today, since I had no watch to run against, when I got to a red light, I could relax and catch my breath without feeling like I was somehow cheating. It definitely felt like the kind of run I should be having heading into a day off.
Plans for the day off, by tthe way, include an 8-mile long run. Haven’t done one of those in a while (since February 16th, to be exact), but I am really looking forward to it. I may end up taking the subway into Central Park to run a loop and then home, because I’m expecting the weekday foot traffic to be a hindrance.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Stacey Derbinshire
I forgot my watch a few times but i am so obsessive that I used the stopwatch on my iPod nano.
However there are times when I intend to not time a run.