This time, though, I remembered not to sleep under the tree!

I went for my usual morning run today. Usually, I am a bit tired after the run. For some reason, today was different. During the run, I felt a bout of irrational exuberance come upon me and ran sub-10-minute miles for the first time in a long time. More importantly, after the run, I felt less tired and more energized. What gives?

I think I will go back to sleep and wait for this feeling to wear off!

it was a run in Central Park, nonetheless.

This morning, in a clearly misguided moment, I signed up for a 5K race near a granite quarry about 20 minutes from home. I wasn’t feeling too confident. My left calf muscle was already staging a protest and my knee was eyeing the situation with suspicion.

Apparently the organizers shared my concern. They gave me bib number 619. That way, if I tumbled over face-down, it would still read 619 and they’d know who they were scraping off the ground.

I assumed we’d be running around the rim of the quarry. Maybe I’d get a nice view of the dramatic depth below. The first five minutes went fine. I wasn’t trying to prove anything, just trying to stay out of a level of pain that would force me to quit.

Then came the shocker. We kept going down. And down. And down. All the way to the bottom.

Now, as anyone who has ever taken a basic physics class knows, what goes down must come back up. So yes, we climbed all the way back out. Reminded me of The Grand Old Duke of York and his marching of his men up and down again!

I stopped to walk not once, not twice but three times just to remind my lungs what oxygen feels like.

But I finished it. All in one piece. The organizers were kind enough to give me a medal, presumably to commemorate my suffering.

I’ll take it.

Need more stretches to keep the left knee from hurting. Ran into three of my old runner friends – Tom, Lia and Bill!

Had not run for some time with all the international travel. The cramps started coming fairly early. Had to stop and stretch multiple times…

After finishing the run, ran into our old running buddy, Bill. After a quick catchup, I suggested to Bill that we should put in a run together. Bill warned me that the run will be slow since he is just getting started this year. I reassured him that slow is good for me. In fact, I told him “My left knee is still bothersome”.

The inimitable Bill immediately came back with “My whole body is bothersome!”