Ran with my son this morning. Today we moved onto week two of couch25k which is harder. He was not happy but he did it–all but 30 seconds at the end. He didn’t talk as much about his new favorite video game because he was working too hard.
Tried running 9 minutes then walking 1. It worked until mile 6 when I got tired and my foot started to hurt. Running isn’t as easy this year. Still not fully recovered from my knee injury. What do I remember from my run? So many cars, streaming by on the river road, heading to work or vacation or somewhere fast. Saw some other runners, bikers, a few roller skiers on the creek path. Ran beside 4 bodies of water: the mississippi river, minnehaha creek lake hiawatha and lake nokomis. Halfway around lake nokomis, the path rises up a small hill and offers a beautiful view of the water. There’s a bench there and I always contemplate stopping and sitting and watching the waves. I haven’t yet. Today, as I ran by it, I noticed how splendidly the blue of the sky, the blue of the water and the green of the trees complemented each other. Was it because of the light–was it bright? I can’t remember. After making it to the big beach, I decided to listen to music. It helped motivate me to keep running. Ran down the hill between Lake Nokomis and Lake Hiawatha and the hill after 28th avenue. Did I pay attention to the creek at all? Was it rushing? Were there any big turtles in it, like the one Rosie and I saw a few summers ago? I don’t know. So much of this run was a blur.
Did second training run with daughter. Slowly, she’s getting better. Small, subtle positive changes. Running when she’s supposed to run. Not stopping. Not freaking out and refusing. Still complaining but with less anger. Today, she sang as she ran about the bing bong (or sometimes the ding dong) that the running app makes as it alerts you to start running again. Oh, the menacing “bing bong”! Why must it bing and bong at all and once it has, when it will it do it again so we can stop? The voice that tells us to “run!” or “walk” is named Allison. According to my daughter, we don’t like her. In fact, we hate her. She is the cause of our pain and suffering as we struggle to run in the heat. (I wonder, in a few weeks, will Allison become our bff? i doubt it, but maybe we won’t blame her quite so much?) Soon, the bing bong is no longer the sound that the app makes, it is the pain that Ro feels in her chest or her foot. “oh, I have a bing bong in my chest!” By the end of the run, Ro has figured out what these “bing bongs” look like: bullet bills from the video game, mario kart. I love her imagination.