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November 14, 2005
Don't Ask Me Why
After procrastinating all day while hoping that the wind would die down, I ended up doing 8 miles on the treadmill instead of my long run yesterday. My thinking was that since the one class I had today was cancelled I could just as easily do the long run today rather than running into a 30 mph headwind for 7 and 1/2 miles and being ushered along by a 30 mph tailwind for the other 7 and 1/2 miles (I don't have much of a choice as to where to run if I have to do a long run -- long runs are necessarily out-and-backs along the lake path, hence the headwind/tailwind problem).
I chose to amuse myself on the treadmill with Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, Volume II. It's been a long time since I've listened to any Billy Joel and doing so I always get nostalgic (for what, I'm not sure). His music is the soundtrack of my high school years; I unabashedly adored him. What high schooler can't relate to "My Life" and "You May Be Right"? I used to listen to "Songs in the Attic" on the way to every meet and my senior yearbook quote was a line from "Only the Good Die Young" (which a couple of friends and I made a sort of theme song): "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints; the sinners are much more fun." I chose this without any sense of irony, even though at the time I graduated from high school I had never cut a class, kissed a boy, touched a cigarette, taken a sip of alcohol, or committed any more grave sin. I went to church every Sunday, volunteered, and played the violin (and the clarinet... and sang, off-key, in the choir). I got special permission to take an extra class in the period I was supposed to keep free to take a gym class in case I got injured and couldn't run track. I was really quite the rebel. I guess what I get nostalgic for in listening to Billy Joel (since it certainly is NOT high school) is being _able_ to choose that quote without any sense of irony. That and being able to not do any speed work for months, then step on the track and do a set of 400s as if I'd been doing them every other day for weeks.
Posted by alweiss at November 14, 2005 11:00 AM
Comments
Wow, your entry makes me feel nostalgic too... for all the fun we had singing that song! We were rebels in spirit, if not in deed... the only thing missing were the right guys to come out and tell us that we were starting "much too late" (as in the song) and it would have all been different!
Posted by: Elizabeth at November 14, 2005 12:18 PM