Running Report

MC • 11th Nov 2008 • The Daily Nonsense • elwood, exercise, jogging, NaBloPoMo, nike

Remember when I said I was embracing my new jogging routine without hesitation? Ok, forget all that, I was clearly full of bullshit that day.

Jogging on a regular basis is hard. Very, very hard. I’m on week 4 of my training which requires jogging intervals of 5 minutes. 5 minutes. For me, that is an eternity of torture. I brought my border collie, Elwood, along for the jog as a way to boost morale. I figured since he had endless amounts of energy, he’d keep me in check. Instead, my dog collapsed on the side of the road during my last stretch of jogging. And I do mean collapse quite literally, which brings me to a side story about Elwood tendency for melodramatic displays of emotion:

I do my best to take Elwood to the dog park at least once every other week if not every weekend. He mostly enjoys playing fetch or stealing other dogs’ tennis balls and usually forgets to take a break. On this one occasion on a moderately warm day, my dog decided he needed some water and in the most dramatic of fashions, flung his body on the cool concrete and started lapping at the water with his head half in, half out of the dish. You can clearly hear the sound of onlookers chuckling at this show of dehydration.

So, here I am, trying to finish the last 5 minute stretch of jogging when my dog decides he’s had enough and I am 30 seconds away from joining him. My pace fell from 13’36″/mi on Friday to 14’29″/mi today, only because I wouldn’t be alive to blog about my jog had I gone any faster. I am a slightly discouraged by my progress in numbers but I can see a difference – I feel great, my posture has improved and my energy level has increased. I feel good after my runs even if I felt like dying moments before.