1) Don't get on the trail until 5:28 at night when it's hot .... like 85 degrees hot.
2) Feel like crap: Tense shoulders. Headache. Calf muscles that hate you for no reason.
3) Unwittingly choose a route that forces you uphill, without break, for the first 8 miles.
4) Miss the turnoff for planned loop out to the Mystic River at mile 6 and don't realize for another 2, inspiring fear of getting lost and forcing the dreaded and often numbing "out-and-back" on the same trail.
5) Starting at the 34th minute, check watch every 2 minutes. Sometimes every 1. If the run is to be 160 minutes, it could be the most times you've checked your watch in your entire career. It doesn't matter; do it.
Hm.
Having survived the experience, what made this run on these heavier-than-thou legs NOT defeat me were the exact qualities that made the first 8 miles excrutiating.
1) Leaving at 5:28 meant that the temperature was headed down rather than up. So the last 45 minutes were in a cool dusk.
2) Missing the turn at mile 6 meant I spent the whole 16-plus miles on the Minuteman Bikeway. Which is 95 percent under tree canopy.
3) Out-and-back when the first 8 miles are uphill means that the second 8 will be downhill.
4) There is zero problem getting at stool at the Rosebud Diner in Davis Square on a Saturday night. I didn't have to worry about post-run aroma smoking out fellow diners, at all.
2) Feel like crap: Tense shoulders. Headache. Calf muscles that hate you for no reason.
3) Unwittingly choose a route that forces you uphill, without break, for the first 8 miles.
4) Miss the turnoff for planned loop out to the Mystic River at mile 6 and don't realize for another 2, inspiring fear of getting lost and forcing the dreaded and often numbing "out-and-back" on the same trail.
5) Starting at the 34th minute, check watch every 2 minutes. Sometimes every 1. If the run is to be 160 minutes, it could be the most times you've checked your watch in your entire career. It doesn't matter; do it.
Hm.
Having survived the experience, what made this run on these heavier-than-thou legs NOT defeat me were the exact qualities that made the first 8 miles excrutiating.
1) Leaving at 5:28 meant that the temperature was headed down rather than up. So the last 45 minutes were in a cool dusk.
2) Missing the turn at mile 6 meant I spent the whole 16-plus miles on the Minuteman Bikeway. Which is 95 percent under tree canopy.
3) Out-and-back when the first 8 miles are uphill means that the second 8 will be downhill.
4) There is zero problem getting at stool at the Rosebud Diner in Davis Square on a Saturday night. I didn't have to worry about post-run aroma smoking out fellow diners, at all.
 |
| Dining companions. |
6) A diner meal at breakfast does not always include a BLT triple-decker club, saucy potato salad and Harpoon UFO .... which, when consumed simultaneously, will save the experience from ruin.
 |
| And the name of the waitress (at left) was ... Karen. |
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