So two weeks to the Half. Sundays are my long-run days so today, for some motivation, Jenn and I did a 10-mile (16km) together (although it probably was a tad more because of a slight detour we took at the
Arb).
The route seemed doable and Jenn and I braced ourselves for what we knew was going to be a brutal hill in the middle of the Arb. But there's going to be a mile-long uphill across the bridge to Canada at the beginning of the Half anyway so we figured it was a good idea to include a couple of hills in our training. Thanks to my trusty Nike+iPod thingey (I still don't know how to call it), I managed to track my mileage throughout. And with just one playlist I stick to almost all the time, I end up associating songs and thoughts with certain points along the route, which is kind of what I did today. Basically, you occupy your mind with whatever you can on a 2-hour run...
Mile 1: The run started breezily along- it was a beautiful day to run too, all sunny and cool. Architecture in Helsinki's "The Cemetery" played while Jenn and I talked ourselves into a frenzy about all-you-can-eat crab legs at
Metzger's tomorrow. Yes, we run and talk about food. A lot.
Mile 3 or so: Running towards the Arb. Jenn's the faster runner but today, she decided to start off a little slower and that allowed me to speed up to pace her. Which was really good. It helped that "Belleville Rendezvous" from the
Les Triplettes de Belleville soundtrack was playing. That song is nothing if not frenetic. Think the Tour de France, but in the middle of Gallup Park.
Mile 5 and 6: Forget music- I could barely hear myself think running up that hill in the Arb.
Gnarly, I think, was how Jenn described it. Steep, pebbly, and worse than I expected. I was practically breathless when I reached the top and I haven't been breathless for so long. I hope the uphill to Canada isn't this bad.
Mile 7: Going downhill through the Arb and back on flat land was a breeze after that hill; even running up to the Medical Center was a cinch. Appropriately, Pete Yorn's "Just Another" played as we turned onto Fuller and that was nice and soothing. And then there was "Through the Backyards" (Au Revoir Simone). Sweet... And while they're both not pumped-up songs by any stretch of the imagination, I think the combination of surviving the hill and being more than halfway through the route was kind of euphoric and Jenn and I both sped up a little at this point.
Mile 9: Last leg. We're running back to Gallup Park now. An oldie but goodie, New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" was on and for some reason I think I smiled. I think it had to do with the fact that we ran past a group of people playing softball and I remembered the summer of 2004 when a bunch of us went down in history as probably the worst softball team ever to play in Ann Arbor. We lost almost every game but we brought watermelons for the umpires and we were nice to our opponents. We sucked at softball but everyone loved us :) Oh, and then there was R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming." A favorite :) More smiling.
Mile 10: Ok. Home-stretch. My legs are hurting- my knees specifically- and all I can remember is Coldplay's "Spies" and "Trouble" and that
awesome video. That first album, Parachutes, is still the band's best one- every single track is a gem. And while they've had good songs since then, as a whole, as Nic Harcourt of
Morning Becomes Eclectic writes in
Music Lust, that was one of the greatest First Albums ever made. And yup, pain still there...
So we're finally done. It's 1.30pm and I feel really good- aching knees and all. We've been officially running for 2 hours, 2 minutes and 48 seconds. We're of course starving since the only thing I've had since I woke up was a banana, and we did just burn 1287 calories. Hunger is a very powerful thing, people, and Jenn came up with the inspired idea to get pancakes at Northside Grill. I was never so happy at the prospect of pancakes :) And so pancakes it was.
Plus eggs, bacon and sausages too! We so totally earned it :)
