My mom’s been super committed to a walking regimen and I’m super proud of her. The other day she told me her iPod seemed to heal itself and instead of just playing the same few songs the shuffle was actually working correctly and she kept hearing songs she hadn’t in ages. One of these rediscovered tunes was the “There’s A Fine Fine Line” song from Avenue Q. It’s wonderful deep yet simple lyric resonates so:
There’s a fine fine line between love and a waste of time.
I keep thinking about fine, fine lines. Today I crossed my own, though not with love or lack thereof (that’s pretty much an everyday thing. HEY-YO!). No, today I decided to change my plans entirely for tomorrow morning. I had booked a rental car for an extra day so I could drive down to Long Beach tomorrow to run one of Charlie Alewine’s weekend marathons. I’ve run several and documented them previously. I just thought it’d be good to see how things were going physically in anticipation of a tougher race at the end of July.
But the jetlag is killing me, as is the narcoleptic insomnia where I can fall asleep but only for a few moments before jerking myself awake and not being able to fall back asleep. The pollen in the air is playing havoc with my allergies. And the ball of my foot is playing up, the princess and the pea styled pain of having a rock under my foot no matter if it’s stationary, moving, elevated, or running or whatever. It’s clearly Metatarsalgia or Plantar Fascia that I haven’t been able to shake. My hip is fine though… but man can I feel that rock.
So there’s a fine, fine line between excuses and discretion. But I’m not so good at recognizing that. I’m pretty sure not going tomorrow morning is the right call — I hadn’t pre-registered as you can just walk up, pay your $50 and run a marathon. The course is the better of the two usuals that Charlie offers, this one along the Long Beach bike path. But it would still require getting up at 3:30 AM and driving down. Traffic is easy then, but on the way back it’s typical parking lot traffic jams. I just am not feeling it. I’m not excited to go run it — it would have just been run as a quantity race, an assessment race, a preemptive tune-up with no real drive other than to get in 26.2 miles and try and address my expanding waistline.
My mom has been so good about her walking — even in blistering heat and humidity, she gets out early enough that she can get her walk in. It’s tough and she powers through it. Like me, there are days she really doesn’t want to do it. But she’s been doing it. I feel like I’m letting her down by bailing on this thing. I know it’s supposed to be discretion, but it sure does feel like excuses.
But like Cortez motivating his men in the new world by burning his ships (or so Sean Connery tells us in The Hunt For Red October), I returned my rental car a day early. There is no easy way for me to get down to Long Beach now and thus I’ve removed the option.
There’s a fine, fine line between running for pleasure and running for pain.
There’s been a lot of pull back from events this year and that’s a bad trend. It’s my hope though that a break here makes for a better return in the near future. I’ve been painfully slow (HEY YO 2!) with average pace times that creep ever longer and longer. So maybe this will be a good thing, allowing me to regroup and come back stronger.
But it sure does feel like excuses.
By the way — way to go, Mom! Proud of you for walking even when the day’s are hard.