Objective: easy (4 days to Eugene) 5:40: 41F, mostly cloudy. Pretty morning. Nothing
felt good until the 4th mile, as usual. I'm trying to not worry about
it though. I will blog a couple of distractions, how's that? I
watched "The Long Green Line" (from Netflix) last night. It is a
documentary about York High School's cross country team as they pursue
their 25th straight state championship. It was worth watching, though
not a must-see. Two things struck me about the story. First, I am
always just baffled by cross country running. These guys are clocking 5
minute (or faster) miles on grass and dirt, and I can barely make it
across a parking strip without rolling my ankle. How do they do it? Is it those cool spikey shoes? Second,
I found myself feeling uncomfortable and quite sad that there was no
mention about a girls' program. (Rant alert.) One of the main themes
of the movie was the portrait of this coach and how supportive and
caring he is, and how he recruits and welcomes even the "fat little
freshmen." Every team member is important, with many repetitions of the
concept of being a good person in life and how that carries over into
running. I cannot reconcile those sentiments with a complete disregard
for girls' running. Not a peep. I know, the movie wasn't supposed to
be about anything but this winning team, but the more they talked about
boys' potential, boys' this and boys' that, the more I longed to see a
girl running. I probably have a giant chip on my shoulder about this,
having grown up mostly before Title 9. Plus I'm cranky you know. Taper.
Another distraction: planning some new goals for my next
training cycle. I have made notes on some workouts I've read here on
the blog and I would like to try some of those. I want to work a little
harder at fitting in at least one 10 miler on weekdays, perhaps two. I
also would like to work up to my full long runs with my ST3 shoes. And
lastly, I hope to experiment with some homemade fuel recipe ideas
instead of giving so much of our income to the Accel Gel company. Need to buy one of those little 6 oz. flasks at the expo. Thanks for listening. :)
ETA: Almost forgot again. Veggie challenge: 3 out of 4, missed the snack again. But the bin is full again so I'll be ok until Eugene.
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