Today was a 7 mile day. 1 hour 11 Minutes.
You might be wondering what would get you to the seven mile mark without thoughts of suicide or worse, Oprah episodes while strapped into a chair and unable to leave. Which I might add is a violation of the Geneva Convention, and the Man Code. But I digress.
My friend Sally told me of a way to distract yourself while running. It was to count things. You can pick the thing that you count. There is not a guide book "How to Count things to distract yourself from the pain shooting up through the bottom of your feet and ending in your brain stem." So since there is no guide she began by counting dogs. Sally is a dog person, loves dogs, thinks dogs are good and holy things that help you. I tend to agree with all of that. So she counts dogs.
Vikings count other things like: Towns that they have been to, but not plundered. Pretty low count and thus it would not distract you from the possible breach in your lungs. Second one to focus in on is Stink Bugs. You may not think that there are many Stink Bugs on the run up to 12 miles, but I will witness to the fact that without a magnifying glass I was able to count 110 Stink Bugs on one run. That is a lot of Stink Bugs. I did not count them on the way down for fear of ruining my very accurate statistical count. Some of them were squished so I counted them too. Some were mating - but I counted them as two because it was a two-for-one Stink Bug day.
So a few days ago during a mild-long run I began to count pill bugs, or rolly-polly bugs or little oblong bugs or whatever you call them. I got to 55 of those. Some were squished too but I counted them. None were mating. And I did not count the bugs on my way out because that might have resulted in double counting of bugs. Not good.
So today on my seven mile run I was thinking of things to count. Did the pill bugs. Stink bugs have all gone into hibernation for the year. Bicyclists make me mad and I scream at them. I did see three cross country skier people. One male and two females. I thought - "how bout you count the blue flowers on the side of the road. Bad idea. I started to count and had three - and then came across a least a billion of them so that was trashed. So I guess that was good and distracting to figure out that I could not count anything today. I could have counted how many guys are old, should not be cylcing with their shirt undone, and look to be about 80 years old. But that would have been only one.
As in my previous posts you find that no matter if you count things or listen to your ipod - dwell on world peace - it is all just you. The other guy on the trail can't run for you and you have to do it yourself. It is an individual effort with the trimmings of personal sacrifice and pushing it until you beat the black numerals for your personal best effort.
You could always count tacky clothing on everyone else - or number of people you could beat up... or try to think of a boys name that starts with every letter of the alphabet and then do it with girl's names. Then try to think of ethnic names that start with every letter of the alphabet...
ReplyDeleteDeep thoughts by Jack Handy!
ReplyDeleteI think about different things I need to do and what paint colors I like and what I would do with a million dollars and deep stuff like that. I'm deep that way!