Today's short run on the sea wall kicked my ass.  It was the hardest run yet! Let me count the ways in which I rationalize this:

Yesterday: made spelt linguine with tomato sauce and spinach.  Ate it all.  Made apple crisp and ate it all.  Worked on courses (played with websites and chatted on msn) until 3am.

 

  

  

 

Today: made a banana-spinach-strawberry smoothie and ate half of a vegetarian pizza with avocado at 12pm.

And then we ran at 1pm.  I stopped twice (oh, the horror).  Came home, drank water, plus finished the remaining 1/4 cup of smoothie and the remaining 1/2 pizza just now.

The other day I finished my pleasure reading, 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running' by Haruki Murakami.  Here's a taste:

And how great was my time?  Truth be told, not so great. At least, not as good as I'd been secretly hoping for. If possible, I was hoping to be able to wind up this book with a powerful statement like, 'Thanks to all the hard training I did, I was able to post a great time at the New York City Marathon. When I finished I was really moved,' and casually stroll off into the sunset with the theme song from Rocky blaring in the background. Until I actually ran the race I still clung to the hope that things would turn out that way, and was looking forward to this dramatic finale. That was my Plan A. A really great plan, I figured.

But in real life things don't go so smoothly. At certain points in our lives, when we really need a clear-cut solution, the person who knocks at our door is, more likely than not, a messenger bearing bad news. It isn't always the case, but from experience I'd say the gloomy reports far outnumber the others.  

Thanks for the uplifting book, Michelle!  He adds a somewhat encouraging piece near the end because that's just the way books like this have to end; can't have a bunch of readers who feel the pointlessness of their wasted lives, running around:

Even if, seen from the outside, or from some higher vantage point, this sort of life looks pointless or futile, or even extremely inefficient, it doesn't bother me. Maybe it's some pointless act like, as I've said before, pouring water into an old pan that has a hole in the bottom, but at least the effort you put into it remains. Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don't necessarily end up so. That's the feeling I have, as someone who's felt this, who's experienced it.

I also find it funny that in an entry a few days ago, I left unfinished a sentence about 'mindfulness'.  So telling.