I could write the most insightful, fascinating post of all time, and there is no way it would be the most interesting thing you've read today. Sad, really.
Last night, around 9:10pm, I saw (on Twitter, naturally) that President Obama was going to make an unscheduled, undisclosed announcement in twenty minutes, and my heart skipped a beat. Presidents don't do that. There's always someone who knows what they're going to say well in advance, and they just don't call people to their television screens on Sunday night. My father, who works in the media, was called back to work very late last night, so we knew something big was happening.
The speech was supposed to happen at 9:30 (central), but it didn't end up happening until almost an hour later, and, as all of you have heard, before the President could start his speech, the news broke that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. We stayed up until after the speech and a little bit of the coverage, and then I set the DVR for the next hour and headed to bed.
They're saying (and I do not doubt that they are correct) that this will be one of those moments that you'll always remember where you were. I took a picture on my phone of the television, because I'm that much of a geek. Naturally, there's a certain amount of adrenaline that hits when news of this magnitude gets announced. I felt the same way as I watched the Egyptian government fall just a few weeks ago. Even though I'm nowhere near the story and I had nothing to do with its occurrence, I still feel like I am part of an historical moment. Last night I had to take all of this monumental feeling to bed, and that's not an easy task.
I've stopped drinking caffeine (specifically Dr. Pepper) after 7 at night in an effort to make myself get to bed on time and fall asleep immediately. Last night, it wasn't the caffeine that kept me up. Though I started to doze pretty quickly, my body did not want to sink into a deep sleep, probably because of the excitement right before bed.
So when my alarm went off at 5:30, it wasn't fun at all. I really felt like I needed one more hour, but sleep is a funny thing. It is one of the only really pleasurable things in this world where we don't actually enjoy the thing itself. We enjoy the after-effects. We like feeling rested, but the sleep itself we do experience because, well, we're asleep. And this morning, I knew that if I went back to sleep for 30 minutes, I would not suddenly feel rested, but rather would probably be even more groggy. Through yawning and sleepy eyes, I got myself dressed and headed out the door.
It was very cool (temperature, not awesomeness) outside this morning, which was a very nice change of pace. At one point yesterday, the temperature was 94. This morning, when I left for my run, it was 49. For the last two days, they've been predicting rain to start in about 5 hours, so when I went to rehearsal, they said it would be raining when I went home. When I went to bed, they told me it would be raining when I wanted to be running. They were wrong. Currently, it's supposed to start raining about 1:00 this afternoon. Sure.
As I headed through the park, I had a bit of a headwind, and I thought it was wonderful, both because it felt good and because that would mean a tailwind on the run home. Yet somehow, the wind had changed before I turned around. Naturally. It's one of the marvels of weather to me, that when I'm running, the wind always seems to be going the other way. Still, it wasn't too bad. I actually had to wear a light jacket out there, so the wind kept me from overheating. I really don't have any complaints on today's run, other than almost killing myself tripping over a small stick that I didn't see on my path. Turns out it's pretty dark at 6am. Who knew?
The one thing I did re-learn today is that I need to do my "other" workouts before my run, not after. For one thing, I'm tired after five miles, and I don't really want to do more work. For another, the motion of the core exercises that I do warms up my muscles, especially those in the leg that has been giving me trouble. It wasn't painful or anything, but I did feel a lot of tightness.
Not that it matters today. I'll be watching the news for the next few hours and marveling at the world we live in. And tomorrow, I get to wake up and run again.
God bless America.
Monday's Run:
49 Degrees / Cloudy
5.05 Miles
38 Minutes, 47 Seconds
No comments:
Post a Comment