My legs are tired, I ran 4.5 miles on a hilly course this afternoon.

The trail I usually run on isn't marked for distance, so I've been more or less guessing on my total mileage for every run. Today I decided to run on the trail at the Y (a .9 mile loop) so I could compare my times and get a little better idea on what I've been running. Turns out I was pretty close with my guess, based on time, it's about four miles to the creek and back.

I really don't like to run. I enjoy being out in the fresh air, and I've enjoyed watching the changes from season to season. I started running in March, so I've been outside for the end of winter, the one week of spring, and all of summer. Now the greens have drained to yellow and the path is carpeted with decaying leaves, and that's pretty nice. But as for the running...I can't say it's my favorite form of exercise. It's effective, but tedious.

Well, the real point of running at the Y today was to time a 5K to see what I could expect to happen during the runs for which I've registered. I should be able to do 5K in about 31 minutes, but since I have practice the night before and my legs will be tired, I think 33-35 minutes is a little more likely. But since this is the first road race I've entered in....oh...15 years? I think I should be nice to myself and aim for a slow 40 minutes. Who knows what's going to happen when I get in a big group of people--I might feel pushed to go out too fast and then blow up in the second mile and have to crawl to the finish. I'm not worried about finishing, really, 5K is an easy distance. Today I ran 4.5 miles and only stopped because it was getting dark, so 3.1 miles should be a piece of cake. Still, all those people....

Oh. Now that I really think about it, it's been 16 years. I last ran a race on St. Patrick's Day, 1986. And I hated every minute of it, as I recall, and I swore I'd never enter another run again. 16 years is almost never, isn't it?
10:12 PM


This is how pathetic I am. This evening I started to make myself supper, and I realized I haven't yet learned how to use our new stove. We got it several months ago, and apparently I've never seen the need to cook since the time of purchase. I couldn't even figure out how to turn the thing on--there was a "start" button next to the "off" button, which seemed like it should fire it up, but no such luck. I just wildly pressed buttons until it finally came to life. I wont be cooking anymore this week, so that's all good.

But as I'm fussing with the stove, it occurs to me that I also don't know how to set the alarm clock. It's my clock radio, for god's sake, I've had it for fifteen years. But Catherine always gets up earlier than I do, so for the past ten years, she has been setting the alarm. On the rare occasion that she goes out of town, I have to get a crash course in alarm setting, only this time I forgot to ask for it.

But--and this is why I love Catherine--when she called me this evening, and I mentioned that I needed to figure out the alarm clock before I got too sleepy to make sense out of it, she told me that she supposed that I would want to get up at 6:30 and set it for me before she left. How sweet is that?
10:02 PM


Because we live in a fucked up world.