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April 28, 2006
Cast of Thousands
When I left to do my workout this morning, I figured I'd see more people than I've become accustomed to seeing along the path in the winter months. It is, after all, a spectacular day -- all pink and green and white and lake-blue and sky-blue and full of light. No angry wind, no bitter nip in the air. In short, shorts weather. And, sure enough, when I started my warmup I found myself running by quite a few people (in the winter, I can do an entire 10-mile run and not see a single soul). However, about 10 mins. after the turnaround, when I was about 2 miles from home, I saw to my horror up in the distance THRONGS of high school boys.
Preparing myself to be by turns amused and harried, I marched on toward them, grateful that I only had a couple more "on" intervals left in my 10x1:30 on/off workout. To my complete astonishment, I didn't hear a single rude, vulgar, obnoxious, or taunting comment. Not a single one. Two miles of high school boys, at times taking up the entire path, and not a single offensive word directed my way. I was impressed. (For those who were wondering, they were out there doing some sort of fund-raising walk -- I asked one of the boys because I was curious.)
As I was leaving the path at the tail end of my cool-down, I encountered an Amish family on their way to the path. One girl, about the same age as the boys they were, little did they know, about to join looked slightly askance at my micro-mini-shorts. I came up with three possible reasons why she may have been scandalized: 1) I had committed the sin of not looking in the mirror before I left my apartment (you know what I'm talking about: people whose outfits are so horrifying in terms of what they reveal that the only possible conclusion is that they failed to look at themselves in the mirror before they left home -- people who, say, go out in a belly-shirt revealing a wide swath of jiggly, untoned belly drooping over straining jeans); 2) she was scandalized by my outfit because she was Amish; 3) she was scandalized by my outfit because she was a teen-aged girl. I finally decided to go with option 3, remembering my own teen-aged horror of running shorts. I was wont to wear even my big soccer shorts with biking shorts underneath, and would never consider wearing my uniform shorts without biking shorts or tights. I don't think I ever actually wore running shorts outside of a meet situation until my junior year in college. What silliness! Now, of course, it's running shorts any chance I get, and the shorter the better!
The workout wasn't great: I felt out-of-shape and my quad bothered me. Of course, the burning quad was far less troubling today since I was actually running hard (so it was SUPPOSED to be working hard), but the strain I felt was still out-of-proportion to the effort I put in. I need to make another appointment to get the source muscle well-stretched and remember to ask for some good stretches I can do to keep it limber. Despite it all, it felt good to do some faster stuff.
Posted by alweiss at April 28, 2006 03:15 PM
Comments
The long shorts with the bike shorts underneath - that used to be my grade school and high school uniform. Wow - I am glad those days are over and that we are no longer afraid of running shorts :)
Posted by: bridget at April 30, 2006 03:47 PM
When I moved into one of the dormitories at my school, I bought new, much longer running shorts. I sure as heck wasn't going to become known as "the new teacher with the short shorts." Much to my surprise, the longer shorts work just fine!
Posted by: stephen at May 4, 2006 08:31 PM