Good Exercise And Sports Day

I ran ten and change this morning and felt great doing it. I can’t remember the last time I was this stoked about my running shape. I’m five weeks out from the Gate River Run and I’m way ahead of where I was last year on race day. This was the farthest I’ve run in more than three years, and the weirdest and most encouraging thing was that I ran the second five miles faster than I ran the first five miles. I held back on the first five but still. I also ran over a pretty steep bridge – twice – that has given me trouble in the past, it didn’t bother me in the least today. I kept waiting to start breathing hard but it didn’t happen, on the way out or the way back. My goal is to beat last year’s time by five minutes. I think I could do that next week. I struggled all of this week trying to run ten, but that was because I was trying to do it on the dreadmill at the Y. Man do I hate that thing. I have to get a half marathon on the schedule this year. When I got home I had more than enough left for another three miles.

I’m cutting the running post short because it’s boring and the alpine sports I watched on television were a lot more exciting. It started out with MJ watching some figure skating and saying how much she was looking forward to the winter Olympics. I made fun or her because the winter Olympics suck. An hour later I was watching the ski jump and really getting into it. It’s stupid how much of a sports fan I am, especially when national pride is on the line. There weren’t any Americans in the competition but that didn’t stop me from choosing sides. The first guy up was a multiple time world champion from Norway. I hated him instantly and hoped he fell. Why? Because MJ is half Swedish, LMJ is one quarter Swedish, therefore Norway sucks. I assumed there would be Swedes in the competition. There were zero. That was the only thing fueling my hatred of the Norwegians. Apparently, the Swiss, Austrians, and Norwegians are into the ski jumping and downhill racing. The Swedes are into cross country and biathlon. It wasn’t a total loss though. There’s a subjective judging portion of ski jumping. It’s not just who jumps the farthest. So I was able to get worked up about the crappy judging.