Running in Washington

142 Days to Race

Today has been a historic day in my running career. Well, perhaps I'm overstating, but it has still been a good day. First the mundane. I ran fartleks today in the fitness center at my hotel. I had a lot of vacation things to do today and couldn't spare the time to travel somewhere to run. Figuring out strange treadmills is always fun. This one was FAIRLY straightforward, though, and I was able to get started pretty quickly. My fartlek training was extended to 30 minutes from 20 minutes. That meant two extra sessions. They kicked my ass. But I was able to finish. During the next to last set, however, a family started staring at me through the window in the fitness room door. I kept imagining what the father was saying to the young girl. Was he commenting on that fat girl who thinks she is running? Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking such things, but I can't help it. There was an article in Runner's World recently about how a formerly fat runner is always a fat runner. Either you are fat are you are running from being fat. I identified. Anyway, it felt like they stared at me for about 10 minutes. I finally waved at them in the mirror and they jumped. Like they really thought I couldn't see them? Mirrors let you see behind you too. That's the cool thing about them. I think that just made the last two sessions even harder than they should have been.

That's a bit of a negative, right? So why am I so happy? Because I seem to have influenced two women in my life to start running and/or set lofty running goals. Admittedly I'm ASSUMING one of these women was talking about me when she could have been talking about anybody, but my cousin contacted me directly. She started the Couch to 5k program today. I'm proud of her for trying and hope she is successful. I hope she knows I'm here for her no matter what. The other woman? She is running for weight loss and has set a goal of running a marathon--probably in 2012. I'm very proud of her, too.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to do a three mile run. There appears to be a nice trail along the Juan De Fuca Straight just outside my hotel. I'm not sure how long it is, but it is beautiful enough that I can double up if needed.