Just Five More Minutes

There are bad ideas, and then there are willfully bad ideas.

One such willfully bad idea is choosing to sleep in on a Saturday when you know that you’ve got things to do. With lots of errands to run and little projects to accomplish, you really don’t have the luxury of sleeping in until after 10:00 on a Saturday morning, but you could not have convinced me of this today.

First, let me say that it was totally worth it. All of the stuff that I’ve had to do to make up for my laziness is annoying, but not nearly enough that it takes away from the awesomeness that was 11 hours of sleep.

Really, this isn’t such a crime. Saturdays were invented for sleeping in which is why there are so many God-awful songs about Friday nights. The only issues that truly arise are issues where there is a time limit, and marathon training in Texas definitely has a time limit. If I’m not home by 8:00am, I’ve got trouble on my hands.

And so it was that my first half was fairly decent this morning/early afternoon, but my second half was quite slow. Meh. So it goes. I’ve gotten to a point in this never-ending summer where I’m not concerned about the things I cannot do as well because of the heat. It’s simply a fact of life in the South, and I’m just happy that there is almost no way my actual race days will be this brutal. I’m fairly certain that any marathon in 90-degree weather would be cancelled.

The only thing that bothered me today was my own focus, but in a different way than normal. Usually, I’m upset because I’m not focused enough, but today, I just wanted my focus to go away.

How is it that I can spend an entire week trying to focus on things (which is becoming more and more of a struggle every day), but when I get to the weekend and am trying to complete seven miles in less-than-ideal conditions, my mind simply will not move from the fact that my body is unhappy with its current situation. All I want to do is reminisce about anything that will distract me from how many miles I have left to go, and all I can think about is how many minutes of running I’ve got remaining.  Much like my sleep issues, it seems that focus only comes when least desired.

But you know what? I can’t worry too much about things like this. Not in this weather. I still covered seven miles today, albeit a little slower than I intended. That’s more than most people I know, and I’m proud of that. As long as I can look back on a run at all, I’m happy about it.

And I’ve got 900 miles to look back at this year.

Saturday’s Run:

88 Degrees / Sunny

7.09 Miles

55 Minutes, 4 Seconds