Little Over 6 Warm Miles in Meyer Park

They're miles. 6.11 ugly miles, but still they were miles that I was running (minus 2 minutes). In 88 degrees weather no less. (85 degrees when I left the park.) Yes, I've survived to tell about it, but I didn't say that I necessarily liked it or that I did terribly well in it.

The last two days (Sunday and Monday) were failures as far as getting out there and getting something on the books and it will make it a little bit of a challenge to meet my mileage goal for the week; however, I have until Saturday night. In Duncan Larkin-style, there shouldn't be any excuses for not doing so if I want to call myself a runner, but being honest to my audience is important and they were 1.) sleeping in on Sunday morning and travelling back from Fort Worth and 2.) the depression that I deal with occasionally that is debilitating (more on that later).

Rising out of the abyss that it can be, I left the house at about 6:45 p.m. and headed for Meyer Park (near Cypresswood and Stuebner-Airline). I hate running loops, but I didn't feel like running in the neighborhood because I only have a 2.1-mile and a 4.1-mile loop (and I didn't want to do those multiple times either).

Each loop on the north side of Meyer Park is 1 1/3 miles. There is a 7/8-mile loop on the interior that shares some of the north side of the loop.

Lance Collins suggested in a comment about leaving the watch at home. But at times of my choosing, I can be incredibly stubborn. Therefore, here is the ugly report. But mind you, I still got the miles in!

Loop 1 -- 10:24.41 (mile), 3:51.94 (1/3 mile)
Loop 2 -- 10:51.11 (mile), *14:11.66 (1/3 mile plus 7/8 mile loop)
7/8 mile loop -- 14:29.81 (I walked this in between)
Loop 3 -- 11:03.34 (mile), 3:51.33 (1/3 mile)
Loop 4 -- 11:03.86 (mile), 3:48.62 (1/3 mile)

*I forgot to hit the lap button as I was going to walk the shorter loop but after 2 minutes, I just ran it.

So, Lance, I'll compromise and I won't calculate the pace per mile (but maybe after I better acclimatize to the heat maybe we'll be able to see some improvement).

Unless a little bit of the cool evening air that Dr. Neil Frank talked about at 5 p.m. this evening on Channel 11 appears, I probably will scratch the Tie One On For Charity 5K Thursday night downtown; however, we'll see! (But I'm still running Run The Woodlands 5K on Saturday as well as helping out Rick Cook and Dave Smart who will be volunteering at the race.)

Brooks Beast (B7, not a model just the 7th pair) mileage: 46 miles.

Awhile back, one of our fellow bloggers asked about how depression affected training and my response (in private until now) was this (and yes, the young eyes that reads this knows about what you'll read below):

Personally speaking, I believe it just shuts it (training) down. For me, it seems like it makes it doubly harder to put the running shoes on and to go out there and do an act that you KNOW is going to make you feel better.

However, when life is really rough and you are depressed (and I've never been clinically diagnosed with it), you tell yourself, "Yeah, I know that, but it isn't going to cure everything that I'm dealing with." Almost a self-defeating cycle.

As I mentioned before, for a long time, I never mentioned my wife in my blog because we had talked about ending things. The stresses, the loneliness and for me, the travel with my job, all play with the emotional desire to get out there and do an activity that we enjoy. Lots of the marital stress is gone, but the loneliness and travel factors into my mental state and it often times takes a lot of mental energy just to maintain an even keel to perform at work (to support a family, which includes an incredible daughter!)

There are a lot of times that I motivate myself to run based on fear - 1.) fear that I'll lose what I've gained (and not necessarily the fear of not hitting a certain time), 2.) fear that I'll put the weight back on that I lost and 3.) the fear that I would lose the respect of runners who follow my blog because I didn't run enough - even though my blog serves so many more purposes than just that.

Some of this was on my mind this evening as I ran and I felt compelled to share. I don't think it negatively affected my running though. (I think laying off for two days did!) And I don't share it to get a wave of e-mails, etc. and so on; however, maybe there are others that deal with the same issue(s).

There it is. The good, the bad and the ugly.

In the meantime, I have a June Runner Triathlete News (RTN) article due, some private and parochial high school football profiles to get done for Dave Campbell's Texas Football, the regular work stuff and I'm working on something awesome that I'm hoping that I can announce next week sometime.