Monday, August 9, 2010

Day 9 The Pirate’s Code

Both yesterday and today, I veered off the course of my training plan.  Both days called for three mile runs.  And both days, well, I couldn’t help myself.  Sunday afternoon was hot and muggy, and I felt more like a nap than a run.  But since it was a three-miler, I felt like that much I could do.  I just didn’t plan on getting caught on the wrong side of the tracks by a stalled freight train.  It was a long one, and it wasn’t going anywhere.  By the time I found a crossing where the train wasn’t and back home again, well, my run became more like four and a half miles. 

Today, I traveled to Evanston to pick up Hannah at her apartment and bring her back home for a family supper and three loads of her laundry.  One of my delights of the two-and-a-half hour round-trip is having the opportunity to run in Evanston along Lake Michigan.  As the weatherman always says, “it’s cooler by the lake,”  in more ways than one.  There is always a breeze along the lakeside path, and thereby the temperature is moderated, but it is, quite frankly, a much cooler place to run anyway you look at it.    It is a different world to me.  This afternoon, the early morning rain had cleared.  The sky was blue, boats sailed across the surface of the lake, and the waterfront park looked like a Seurat painting with people relaxing on benches and blankets and playing frisbee.  I ran through Northwestern’s campus, past old houses on Sheridan Road, and….well, time ran away with me.  Um, and as a result, I stretched my three mile run into five.  Oops.

Yes, I am following a Hal Higdon training plan, but as Captain Barbossa explained in Pirates of the Caribbean, the code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.  

A pirate’s life for me!

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