Not To Be Trusted With Knives

The Run That Didn’t Want To Happen

October 5, 2012 by Beth

So, I’m running a half marathon in just over day and I hadn’t been out for a run in nearly two weeks! Zounds! How did that happen??

Well, I committed myself to running the weekly long run in the half marathon training plan that I use and the last long run was two Sundays ago, when I ran 20 km. The training plan includes some tapering, where you do some short runs, but nothing long and intense, to give your body some time to “recover” from the training and get into optimal shape for the race. However, due to my insane schedule the last couple of weeks, my “tapering” has equaled zero running at all! Now, I had a few short runs booked into my schedule, but things always came up that interfered with me doing them – an extra teleconference here, and I’m-not-yet-done-my-assignment there. Extraordinary circumstances, as they say.

But I decided that since today is Friday, I could take some time out of my evening to go for an after-work run. Mainly because I wanted to make sure that I still remember how to run and that all my running parts were in working order before Sunday’s race. As the work day ended, I noticed that my phone’s battery was rather low and since I’d forgotten to bring my charging cord to work with me1 and since I use my phone to track my runs, I’d have to do some charging when I got home. No matter – I used that time to get my running gear on and do some stretching/rolling.

I decided that I would just do a short, easy run along the New West pier, because I love running next to water and the pier is really nice. As I headed out, the sun was on its way to setting, but it was very clear, so I grabbed my sporty sunglasses2. And as I went to put my sunglasses on, I snapped them right in half3. OK, I thought, looks like it’s going to be a squinty run for me, as about half my run was facing directly into the setting sun.

And then I heard the train. You see, to get to the New West Pier, you have to cross a train track. Which you can’t do when there is a train on it. And because this train is going through a heavily pedestrian area, it goes really, really slowly. And it blasts its really, really loud horn. No matter, I thought, I’ll just go up the big set of stairs to the pedestrian overpass – NBD4. So up I go. Up and up and up to the very top… where there’s a sign that says “Danger, do not cross.” Now, usually when I see a sign that says not to do something, my natural inclination is to do said thing5. But when the thing that I’m being told to not do is cross a very, very high bridge above a very, very deadly train… well, apparently that is where I draw the line on my rule breaking. But no matter!, I told myself, I’ll just consider the stairs a warm up! I am out for exercise, right? I even got back down the stairs in time to do more stretching as I waited for the slow, slow train.

Eventually the train passed by and I was off on my run! Despite spending half the run squinting6, it was a lovely evening for a litte run. And at the end of said run, I checked my Runkeeper app to see how far I’d run and it told me this:

Apparently, despite the fact that I’d run for more than half an hour, Runkeeper thought I’d run for a grand total of 4 seconds and covered a distance of 0.1 km7.

But never fear! It at least recorded what time I started and I checked the clock when I finished, so I knew how long I’d been running. And I also knew where I’d run, so I was able to map it out to find the correct distance!

This is what I actually run:

Beth 1, Universe Trying To Stop Me From Running Today 0.

1. My phone battery is craptastic, so I usually bring my charging cord with me to work since I often need to charge it up during the day, despite it having charged overnight. [↩]
2. As opposed to my blingy sunglasses or my Lindsay Lohan sunglasses. [↩]
3. It’s not a huge deal because they were just cheap sunglasses. Because I don’t buy expensive sunglasses because I have a tendency to do things like snap them in half. Or lose them. [↩]
4. No big deal. [↩]
5. And take a picture of me doing said thing. [↩]
6. Due to aforementioned sunglasses breaking incident and my determination not to go back to the apartment to get another pair lest I be tempted to just give up on the whole endeavour. [↩]
7. I recently updated a bunch of apps, including Runkeeper and it seems a bit glitchy on my ancient iPhone 3GS. Must find some time to go get me an iPhone 5! [↩]

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