The Evil of Traffic Lights

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The beach - which I am absolutely convinced is mine and which people should keep clear of - Santos, Brazil

12 km 

1:05:55 / 5.29 pace

Beach, 28C, mid-afternoon, windy



Slow today - which I put down to feeling exhausted before I started, thanks to insomnia and work demands, plus the heat and wind. My left heel hurt, too - more than usual. It was in many ways a dreadful run and I wanted to stop after 3 km, but decided to run 12 km so that I could say I had done some 'mental training' if nothing else. I have this theory based on no evidence or specialist knowledge that hard runs - meaning anything when I just find it hard for whatever reason - are good for my mental preparation for the marathon, especially the last half hour when I will experience misery no matter how well I prepare.

My long training runs alway starts the same, no matter how they develop. There is a 400-meter jog through busy streets from home to the beach front, at which point I go left or right, asphalt or sand. On the last little stretch, from maybe 100 meters away, I can see the traffic lights on the road I need to cross to get to the beach. If they are green when I first glimpse then, I know there is no chance of crossing smoothly without stopping and I will have to hang around, which throws my mood right out. If the light is red, I have a chance that it will change by the time I get to it and across I will float, feeling somehow lucky and it improves my chances of a good run (this is the kind of nonsense I can't shake off, it really has an impact on my mood, the traffic light). 

It struck me recently that the lights are set to a certain routine and while I think that the final 100-meter approach is the key to how I will feel about the rest of the run, in fact it was all 'written' from the moment I started getting ready for the run at home. Taking the trash out (or not) before I get in the elevator and leave the building where I live will have decided where I fit into the traffic light routine. I just won't know how it has fallen for me till that last 100 meter approach. 

Today it was red when I approached but I still had to wait to cross the road. The timing was off and I cursed myself for having taken the dog out before the run. It was obviously that which had thrown everything out of cosmic alignment. 

I only half-jest. I think a lot about these kind of alignment ideas. I thought a lot more about them as I ran today, wanting to give up almost from the start. Yesterday was a holiday (Day of the Dead) and today was taken off as well by a lot of people, it being Friday and sunny and these people being Brazilians, who tend to see holidays not on Fridays as double holidays. 

*My* beach was packed, consequently. My mood was already gloomy - what with feeling tired, not wanting to run, and the traffic light conspiracy against me - and this crowding made running more of a challenge, as I had to avoid people. People, it seems, who have no peripheral vision. OK, kids, really. I lost count after 12 of how many little kids I was on a direct collision course with as they took a straight sprint into the sea, oblivious to the red-faced moaning idiot shuffling along the shoreline towards them. I started to think some kind of evil god was instructing these kids to 'Go!' as I approached, just to spoil my running line. That was before I remembered how it was all down to the traffic light and it would never have happened if I had not been held up at the crossing. All these kids would have been on a different Destiny Wavelength to mine, see? 

And the wind made things worse. Headwind out, tailwind back. The heat on the way back was tough, not having the wind to cool me down. It was all just wrong and even my theory of mental training didn't make me feel better about it. 

To finish, as I approached the lights on the way back, they were red. So I ran a few laps round a fountain to wait for them to change. On the last fountain lap, as the lights changed to green, a pre-teen girl on a bike that was too big for her headed my way, saw me and changed course to make sure she hit me. 

It was that kind of traffic light nightmare day. 


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