Change of Pace

It's amazing how little I accomplish outside of running when I'm really training hard. All I want to do is anything that will keep me off of my feet. Actually, even that's not really enough. I'm lying here in bed typing on the laptop and all I want to do is shut my eyes and take a nap.

Which is exactly what I did for the better part of an hour after typing that last paragraph. There's just an overwhelming fatigue that infuses everything I do. I have trouble paying attention during conversations. I forget to do important things that have to get done, both at home and at work. My legs feel heavy and my feet ache. Right towards the end of last week - the easy week - all of this torpor was lifting and I felt myself returning to the world of the living. But here I am two days and 35 miles into this week and the veil is beginning to fall once again.

Five more weeks. I keep telling myself this. And really, it's not even that long, because the taper will kick in even sooner than that. So it's really two weeks more of carrying this overweight chimpanzee on my back. I just need to work on getting a little more sleep each night to compensate and it will be over with before I know it.

One thing that has been helpful for me on these unrelenting long runs is my somewhat tardy discovery of podcasts on my shuffle. I mean, I know what podcasts are, but I've never actually downloaded one. So I spent my last 5 hours of park loops listening to the jovial liberal banter of NPR. It's almost as good a distraction as actually having someone to run with, though it probably looks a little funny when I start cracking up at random halfway up Harlem Hill over P.J. O'Roarke and Roxanne Roberts' hopelessly witty banter. And I sometimes get a little choked up during This American Life segments, which can interfere with my breathing, but nonetheless, it really does seem to help make the miles go by.