The Running Man

When I went from Chubby to Studdly, I started getting into running. At first I couldn't even run ONE mile straight. Within a few months, I worked my way up to about six miles per day!

Thereafter, I ran semi-regularly in college, but that started to dwindle as I played sports more regularly and didn't like the constant pounding running put on my joints. These days, running for me is sporadic at best. I do a lot of cardiovascular exercise at the gym because the machines are joint-friendly which is nice since the sports I play are pretty high impact and taxing on the joints.

Geez, rereading what I just wrote makes me sound like a 70 year old man! Well, hopefully with all this exercise I do, 70 year old Arun will still look as dashing as 24 year old Arun :)

Anyways, the point is, I don't really do distance running much anymore...well...almost anymore.

So last Sunday, the day after the Crazy Barbecue, I woke up early feeling energized! I did some writing for another website while the stragglers who stayed over from the barbecue cracked open some beers to start off the day (Ridiculous...I know...after complaining about being hungover, they all cracked open beers at like 9 in the morning, then went to Carl's Junior for breakfast...that is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of living life awesome! YIKES!)

The previous night, I had left the barbecue early to go to my friend Stacy's condo-warming party at his new pad in the thick of Downtown San Diego. In the midst of having fun, he was telling me about the marathon training he's doing, and how he ran like 20 miles that morning. This got me thinking...

So Sunday morning rolls around and, after the copious amounts of eating I did the previous day, and my feeling energized, I decided to go for a run! It was beautiful outside and the sun was shining. I laced up my shoes, strapped on my watch, fired up the Ipod, and took off!

Me, being the brilliant planner that I am, failed to notice that it was peak time for the sun and was a somewhat blazing 88 degrees outside...great weather for hanging out, but pretty uncomfortable for long distance running. Demonstrating my further brilliance, I failed to calculate the need for water while running in the heat.

Not my brightest moment, I know.

Anyways, about ten minutes into my run, I was feeling pretty good, so I made a decision: "I'm going to set a personal record! If Stacy can run 20 miles, I can at least do half of it!"

So I decided to run to the UC Campus. Once I arrived, I pretty much decided to get lost on the huge campus on purpose. I don't know my way around campus, so I just picked random roads and kept running. Well about 45 minutes into the run, I was feeling particularly parched. And by "parched" I mean my mouth was so dry my tongue was stuck to my cheek. Conveniently it was Sunday, so all of the buildings with drinking fountains were closed.

Wonderful.

I spent the next 15 minutes running around campus looking for a drinking fountain. Finally I came upon an alley near campus services which had an outdoor drinking fountain that looked shoddy at best. I didn't care. If any driblets of water AT ALL came out of that thing, I was going to wrap my mouth around the spout and suck the life out of that thing! I needed water.

I hit the button, and my dreams became reality...a nice, solid stream of water shooting up like a fountain of life! AND, it was cold! This may have been the best water I've had in my life.

Eventually, after being sufficiently lost somewhere on campus, I decided I was tired...now I have to head back. By the time I found my way out of campus, I was pretty much gased and had almost no energy left. This was not ideal considering I was about 4 miles from home.

Did I mention I'm a great planner?

Being a person who likes to challenge himself, I refused to walk and decided to run through the pain! Yea! It just so happened with about 3 miles to go, my Ipod decided to stop working, so now I had nothing to distract me from my screaming calves and aching legs. It was 1 o'clock by this point and the sun was really blistering.

I pushed through, made it home and collapsed. I had literally NO energy whatsoever. It took about an hour to build up the energy to find something to eat! The longest I had ever run was probably about an hour - like 7 or 8 miles. On this day, under the heat of a blazing sun at the peak of the afternoon, I ran for 2 hours and 13 minutes. 13 miles! Close to, if not, a half marathon...for someone who doesn't really run.

I've been sore for days (big surprise).

So what am I doing now? Certainly not running this week! But, I am planning a LONGER run this Sunday. As painful as it was running back home, the feeling afterward of accomplishing something I had never done before was AWESOME! Plus, most of the run was pretty enjoyable.

Step up to the plate, do something you've never done before, and challenge yourself!