A.M. Jeff slept in. Ran first 8 with Daniel and Mary Ann, then the remaining 2 alone. It was very slippery. Mary Ann and I tried doing quarters, but after the first one in 82 decided it was too slippery to get anything out of it, and postponed speed until tomorrow. Was able to do explosions. Did a pickup of 600 meters on a dryer section of the trail in 2:04. Felt a lot stronger than on Saturday. No ear pain from harder breathing, and the will to win, or "the killer instinct" as Mike Kirk calls it, is returning. The ear is still congested, though.
Running without the will to win is hard. I learned something in the last race, I should say I learned it better, because I already knew. The will to win is 90% if not more physical. Spiritually you could be willing to die to win, but if the physical will to win is not there, you will coast through the race, finish not so tired, but for the life of you would not be able to go faster. On the other hand, you can come to a race wanting to just jog it, but if your body is brimming with the physical will to win, you will run yourself into the ground against your spiritual will, and you will run a good time. On another subject, the infamous Reset Button was recently mentioned in the news. It was given by Hillary Clinton to the Russian foreign minister to symbolize a fresh start in the relationships between Russia and the US. The button had the word Reset written in Russian and in English In the true spirit of American Superficiality (TM) the State Department made two grave errors. One - the Russian word was written with the Latin alphabet. Bad move. Russians are every protective about their alphabet and their language in general. I remember learning a poem as kid in reference to the Second World War: Our people will not allow our sweet-scented Russian bread to be called by a German word brot. The thought of that alone would have been enough to give millions of Russians the strength and the courage to fight the fiercest battles.
As if that were not enough they got the word for Reset wrong by leaving out an important suffix. That changed the meaning of the word signficantly. Instead of Reset, it became Overload. Based on that description I would expect the button to trip the circuit and shut everything down in case of a dire overload emergency. When a Russian kid makes a serious spelling or language error, the teacher or his parents often sarcastically award him the title of a grammar scholar. I remember receiving that title from my mom on numerous occasions. One Russian newspaper very rightfully so called the creators of the infamous button American Grammar Scholars. The embarrassment could have been easily avoided had the button design been previously shown to one native Russian. But apparently that was too much work for the State Department. I find the incident symbolic of a lot of things, too many to mention. It reflects a general level of not being on the ball, out of touch with reality, looking for a quick fix, and failing to slow down and understand how something really works. The current recession is a fallout from that mentality. I expect it to last as long as the mentality itself, which will be longer than a couple of years. P.M. 2 with Benjamin in 15:58. 2 with Jenny in 19:00, Julia ran the first mile in 9:44 with us.
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