My Life in Musical Analogue

As luck would have it I wound up with 2 extra hours in my day today. Often when this happens I go into sort of a shock mode, like a deer in headlights. What do I do now? And I’d been on my feet all day performing moderately (OK, maybe severely) boring tasks on which I won’t elaborate here, so I was kind of groggy. Not feeling sad or angry, but not good either, just kind of like I was existing in some sort of continuum over which I had no control. The kind of feeling that running can cure.

Parked at Lloyd Hall more out of convenience than because I wanted to run the Drives. Luckily I’d thrown some shoes and shorts in the car this morning. Had no plan, and I set off on a clockwise loop. Figured I’d get in from 45 to 60 min.

I’ve been trying to incorporate strides (or surges, or acceleration gliders, or whatever the hell you wanna call them) into my runs lately, so I decided to very loosely put together around 8 x 20 sec with 1 min jogs in between. This started after about 6 min. Again, these were very loose, some shorter, some longer, faster, slower, etc. Tried to focus on form, as I imagine this is why one would do these sorts of things to begin with.

After 4 of these I decided I’d had enough of the traffic on MLK and turned onto Lansdowne Ave. I discontinued the bursts, not because I couldn’t continue them uphill along Lansdowne, but because I didn’t want to tear my legs up too soon after CR. This ended up working out nicely in retrospect. Ran steadily at a mostly easy pace around West Fairmount on a route that I can’t recall at this point. Very meandering, including onto the grass on Belmont Plateau and into the fire trails briefly, and finally past the lot where I got stuck last Friday. Found my way back to MLK via Montgomery, and when I reached Sweetbriar again I began 4 more bursts. This time with a tailwind, and I felt like I was flying. With about a mile to go I tried to bring it in steady, not particularly fast, but focused and with good form. This became challenging once I turned back West into the wind for the last ½ mile around the PMA, but I never lost focus.

What I really like about this run is that it was unplanned, but it still turned into a decent workout. Two blocks of surges with some slower hills sandwiched between. And I consciously tried to base my efforts on feel as opposed to HR or pace. I think it provides an explanation to me of the difference between seriousness and sincerity, something I’ve been pondering about lately. If I’d been playing music for this 1:01:34, I think it would’ve sounded much like this record.