The little engine that do

I'm clearly the caboose of the team. But you know, when I had to poop in a hole in the ground in the middle of the Bengali country side last year, I thought to myself, "After this, I can do anything." Somehow, over the past year that has translated into running.

This whole thing where you totally suck at something but slowly watch yourself improve despite setbacks? ..is getting addictive.

I've been doing most my runs in the park near my house, which for some reason I always assumed was a 3 mile circuit. Last week I had a crappy slow run, which made me gmap that path and see how long it really is, fully expecting it to turn out to be, like, 3.2 miles or something.

Turns out, it's 2.4 miles. Ack! Guess who felt like a huge wimp. It was so hard after that to get back out there and do a for-real 6 miler. I did it, and with my newfound mental discouragement, it really sucked my ass. Especially the hill...I lumbered up that hill and I just kept thinking about how much that's gonna hurt when I'm in Colorado where the air is thin.

Then I had my first ever 10K race on Saturday, and, given that my last run before that sucked the big one, I was not feeling great about it.

Turns out...it wasn't really that hard, and lots of fun. I think it's weird how many people do a 10K with, like, 7 water bottles strapped to their butts, as though they're undertaking a trek across the desert, or something. Seeing all the equipment that people were packing, and their fancy running clothes and stuff, made me wonder whether I was doing something wrong. But I don't stop for water when I do 6 miles in the park, so I thought, what's the big deal?

I started off towards the back and just sort of slowly started chugging along, and by 5K I had passed a ton of people, and I chugged on, and before I knew it, I was done.

My time was 1:02 and wearing my big honking medal all the way home totally gave me the strength to pedal my shitty bike all the way back up the mountain. Dynamite!