I ran 4.87 miles tonight. The fam went to a kids’ amusement park east of Pittsburgh apparently “voted best kids amusement park in the world”. I think they might have been referring to the fact that the entire park was staffed with kids. Okay, there was one adult. I did a couple of rides, hit the water park, did a couple more, then spent time with my fearless baby in a sprinkler pool. Then more rides. A bottle of water cost $3. The place was crawling with people. It looked like a fricking flamingo rut, with pink creatures standing cheek to jowl in warm, shallow water. Raced home in the evening, made dinner, then had a run, late again. Tomorrow I get to run during the day! Woo hoo!
Tonight I put on my headlamp, clothes, grabbed my Garmin and it fell apart. I was holding a strap. I couldn’t figure out what happened, so I opened a kitchen drawer and found my trusty Casio digital watch. I ran with a Casio for like four years. I hitch-hiked across Alaska and Europe with the same crappy, cheap model. Water-resistant, stopwatch, alarm, date, military time option, light. The battery lasts for years and years. My Garmin 110 lasted 6.5 months out of the box. That’s garbage. And the GPS never lasted more than 6.5 hours, though it advertised it could do 8 hours. Nope.
I like that my Casio only alerts me to the passing of an hour. Tonight, it beeped, and I knew it was 11 pm. That’s good. That’s a good hour to –
“Run Forrest ruuunn!” I got that from two cars tonight, one riding behind another. That’s a single-day PB, and an annual PB of six Forrest calls in the same calendar year.. I’ve broken my record for Forrest calls. Out here in the sticks, the humans that produce the Forrest call have no other cultural or social reference to frame the oddity of seeing a runner. No Chariots of Fire, no Meb, no Rupp, no Prefontaine, no Kenya, no Ethiopia, no Jim Thorpe, nothing. All runners are Forrest Gump. All runners get a shout of encouragement from a total stranger because of the movie. How cool is that?
That’s what I get for running through a cryptopolis on a Saturday night.
I’m at 168 for the month. I’m going to shoot for 201. I need thirty-three miles in the next two days. I’d like to do it on grass. I need a break from the concrete and asphalt. I need new shoes so badly. I’ve put 1000 miles on my fast trainers, at least 800 miles on my slow trainers.
Fifty State Banana 