It was an unsuccessful experience from the start. I had a strange feeling as I prepared to step out the front door and, overcome with a bizarre mix of paranoia and stubbornness, I removed my engagement ring, my wedding ring, and my birthstone ring. I was imagining that if I was going to be mugged I'd be damned if they got anything more valuable than my running shoes.
This isn't a great mindset to start a run in the dark at quarter past eleven, but as I said, I was also feeling stubborn and determined to do as I'd set out to do, even if I was feeling some trepidation. Besides, it's been too hot to run in a very long time and I've been feeling stir crazy between bouts of paralysis.
Immediately upon reaching the end of my street I was startled by a big white truck (always reminds me of O.J.) that suddenly pulled a U-turn directly in front of me and squealed its tires taking off so fast. This only heightened my paranoia and I decided at that point that I was going to take a different route than I usually do since my regular route takes me into an area that is sort of country-ish without streetlights and where the houses are quite far apart.
Instead, I stuck to the main road and promised myself to go nowhere there weren't plenty of houses and streetlights. After a few minutes the same truck roared up behind me and flashed past going way too fast for a residential street. I imagined I was being followed and crossed the street so that I would be running in the opposite direction of the traffic enabling me a faster escape if anyone tried to abduct me. (And still, the stubbornness would not let me go home.)
I hadn't gone far before my body began to object. In spite of the fact that the heat was significantly less today, it's still damned hot out there, and my body didn't like it, especially in light of the fact that I've been eating like bird for a couple of weeks as it's been too hot to turn on a stove, or even to move for that matter. I started to get cramps in both sides, which is the first place my body always feels uncomfortable if it's going to when I am running. Other people get shin splints or sore knees or painful arches. I get cramps in my sides. When I'm in good shape the cramps are rare, but I don't think I'm in particularly great shape at the moment and somehow the whole running experience just seemed doomed from the start.
Having gone for fifteen minutes in one direction, I turned around and headed home, making the run a total of half an hour (with several walk breaks), just over half of what I have been trying to do lately. Not very impressive.
Of course a swarm of mosquitoes followed me in the front door when I turned on the light, and the house seemed to have gotten hotter in my absence. A check of the weather station reveals that it is 21°C which is a full two degrees hotter than it was at noon. This strikes me as very odd since it is now nearly midnight.
With this delightful experience behind me I am thanking my lucky stars that it was paranoia I was experiencing and not psychic premonitions. And going to hit the shower, read my book, pout, and go to bed.
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