There is only one week left of classes in Spring term, so Wednesday I was supposed to do a sort of exit interview for class: I was to run one mile and compare it to my time from the first week of class. Foolishly, though, I signed up to give blood that day, and had to opt out. Luckily, it was a 90° day with relatively high humidity, and my usual jogging partners looked like death when they were finished, so I felt as if I had fallen in to a vat of pink cotton candy. Cool, pink cotton candy.
Today I had to make up for my absence, and was delighted to see the temperature was only 71° and the weather was overcast and slightly drippy. Thunderstorms and lightning were imminent, however, so I laced up and headed out for a quick mile. The result was 10'18", which is nothing to write home about; the previous time was 11'51", making a two month improvement of 1'33", which is nothing to sneeze at. I meandered home satisfied, woke the husband, and proceeded to eat a nutritionally terrible lunch.
Feeling bad about the lack of substantial exercise compounded with a veggie burger (with bacon!), potato chips and an enormous diet cola, I played with my Wii Fit for a half hour, then attempted to watch television. The stupid National Weather Service, however, kept interrupting my even stupider re-runs, so I was left again to ponder my intake versus exercise. When the thunder and lightning abated, I decided to run again today in order to get in my usual 30 minute workout I missed yesterday.
After falling behind and being improperly motivated most of the term, my current jogging pattern is to run for 3 minutes, walk for 1 minute, and repeat for half an hour. It's a slow work-up to running for 30 continuous minutes, but I have done the same six week schedule a few times now, and it works surprisingly well. Clearly it works better than I do, though, as I've done the program a few times now. I ran/walked down to the local elementary school, completed 32 minutes of 8 repetitions, then decided upon a walk to the grocery store to cool down.
Despite the earlier rain and still-overcast skies, the temperature was now close to 80° and the humidity was even higher than earlier. The walk was nice, but I was overheated and barely breathing in the pea soup. I slowed down, lollygagged my way down the hill, and jumped up to pull on soaking tree branches as I went under them. The lovely little showers probably made me look like a mental case to drivers, and the goofy smile sealed the deal.
I arrived at the store happy, cooled, and damp. I bought fruit to make myself feel better about later snacking decisions and batteries for my calculator, then headed back out the door, only to find the rain had returned in full force. No jacket, no umbrella, but still pretty warm, I walked back up the hill in the pouring rain, savoring a juicy organic peach and washing away the sweat of the day. I don't remember the last time I was out in a summer rain storm, but I do remember sitting on a porch in Portland back in 1996, amazed by the mere existence of one, and considering moving to the Pacific Northwest.
And look at me now.
1 comments:
Foxy should be (er, IS) your name.
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