Ironically, after talking up how challenging it will be to train in Boston during the winter, I kicked off my training with two weeks in Puerto Rico. Best way to sum it up is "different." My lungs were a little confused, but at least my body held up better than my watch. Designed to be water resistant up to 5 ATMs, for "dancing in the rain without a worry", it promptly fogged up under the display and died. Never under estimate the humidity in PR. Of course, one of my teammates running back in Boston slipped on a patch of ice and ended up with a broken nose and chipped tooth. And I wasn't in Chicago. So I'm going to stop complaining.
And now it's back to the regularly scheduled program. Mid 20s. (Unless there's a vortex. Or spring.) Hopping snow drifts, dodging plows, and generally just trying to finish with your teeth intact. But a bit gets flipped in my brain after a while. What I start out dreading becomes something else. A craving. Or scratching an itch. This happened back in college as well, training in Northern Virginia in August. (Another environment my watch wouldn't have appreciated.) I would run at the least uncomfortable time of day, which happened to be 2am. Still 90 degrees, humid, pitch black, crushing unsuspecting frogs with every other step. And it was terrible, until it was fun.
It's not a case of "runners high". Sure I like endorphins as much as the next guy, but it doesn't outweigh struggling against headwinds on the Charles. It's closer to runners OCD. Lots of repetition, step after step, day after day. Obsessively count the runs and log the miles. Check the splits. Replay the GPS route. Again. This is the same part of my brain that sorts Skittles. And when my watch drops out during a run, and only records some of the miles, or slashes straight across the map from where the GPS signal was lost to where it was picked up again, incorrectly calculating the pace and throwing off my lifetime per-mile average...
Ironically I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to running tech. My dad and brother gifted me my first GPS watch only last year. And I used to think running with a phone was ridiculous. But maybe that was just one part of my brain trying to protect this other part. Did you know I ran 641.0 miles in 2013? I can show you the chart. It's very pretty.
Replacement watch on the way.
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