When Bad Traffic Lights Turn Good

-
A street near where I used to live, Etobicoke, Toronto - you could say the sign spoke to me

16 km 

1:22:55 / 5:11 pace

29C, afternoon beach run, extremely windy / stormy at the end


This was a run I approached with some concern. I wanted to run 16 km and I wanted to run at 5:13 pace, but I had done nothing in the five days before to suggest either of these targets was really on the cards. So you can imagine how pleased I was and still am that I hit the distance target and exceeded the pace target. It's really about as perfect as it gets and I was honestly surprised by how the kilometers ticked by, and the pace kept getting better. At 10 km I was averaging 5.17 pace and thought I would at least get close to 5.13 but I did not expect to hit it, much less exceed it. 

What happened? 

The traffic light I talked about yesterday changed to green just as I was closing in on it. An extra burst of speed got me across in time without taking my chances with the drivers and sure enough, although the beach was busy, I had no near misses with kids racing into the sea across my path. Our Destiny Wavelengths had been set that way by the traffic light.

I felt great, mainly because of the sign I had been given by the traffic light, and my first kilometer came in at 5 minutes 21 seconds. It's not uncommon to be at around the 5.50 / 6.00 mark when the light goes against me. When I have to wait for the light to change I stop my watch but the red light itself seems to just throw me out and it spoils my entire mental approach. 

Feeling good about the early pace I decided not to lose time running the canals. I'll explain those another time, but these are used a lot to add distance to a run by cutting inland from the shore to the road. Each time I do that I add about 400 meters to the run compared with the option of running across the canals if they are crossable, depending in the tide. I decided today that as I was going to run 16 km I would have to throw in the other leg of the beach - which sits to the west - and I would give myself a better shot at holding a quicker pace by not having to run on fluffy sand, dodge sunbathers and spliff smokers, or run any hairpin bends.  

It worked. I also had some help from the elements in the last three kilometers. A rain storm drew in and the headwind on the 13th km was rough. But I was feeling great at that point having already hit 5.13 pace and I pushed on. As I turned to run the last three kilometers home the tailwind was so strong I felt like I was running on one of those conveyors at airports that enable you to cover long distances without much effort, if any at all. 

To put the cherry on the icing on the cake, lightning started. You don't want to be on a beach and / or near trees in those conditions (the path next to the beach is tree-lined) and actual fear for my life made sure I hit my best speed over those last two kilometers. Just meters from home the rain came down in the kind of rods you see in films when someone is doing something heroic or romantic. I had made it back just in time because that rain would certainly have spoiled my day if I had spent much time running in it. 

That's it. As you know if you read yesterday's piece, this was all down to the traffic light. As a seriously depressive pessimist it is hard to say but I have to admit it now: things can, and sometimes do, fall for me. Today they did. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pent Up Athlete

-
Image
The beach, São Vicente - this is the 3.5 to 8.5 km stretch of my run, turning back at the foot of the two apartment blocks in the middle of the picture. At night I run along the silver line where the sea laps onto the shore 12 km  59:21 / 4:57 pace  17C nighttime beach run, 16 kph wind   I got home tonight at 10:00 PM after taking two hours to drive 87 km from the University of São Paulo. Every time I drive to or from São Paulo I am forced to confront the failure of Brazil up close. It is a broken country but no one seems to mind much. No one except me. It drives me crazy and when I got home I was in two minds. I was tired and fed up and I have an early start in the morning, but I also really did not want to skip a day's training. I knew that if I did, the anxiety would probably keep me awake all night anyway, so I decided to go out and see what happened.  I promise not to drag this on any longer, but the traffic light fell for me. You know what that ...
Read more

Junk Smiles

-
Image
Rippled sand on Santos beach 12 km 1:05:31 / 5.27 pace   Night beach run, 22C. Tired.  Felt fine tonight, but understandably tired after recent exertions and two days of revising a 200-page thesis. My task was to revise the English, as it had been written for a doctorate by a non-native speaker of the language. Given that I understood nothing of the subject, I simply had to ignore my lack of comprehension and focus on the language itself. The overall impact was very tiring and very strange, reading page after page of stuff that made no sense to me but making sure it was in good English. I felt like a robot and I suppose if I had the time and inclination that experience would be an interesting basis for a comment on whether or not Artificial Intelligence will ever achieve consciousness. Luckily for you I don't and won't.  This was slow but there was a sweet moment in the middle when I felt I could just run all night, and that running was in fac...
Read more

Reckoning

-
Image
Detail 1-35327, by Roman Opalka "The problem is that we are, and are about not to be" Roman Opalka 16 km  1:23:54 / 5.15 pace 7.20 pm start. 22C. Windy.  I used to say - to myself and anyone who would listen - that when I have nothing to say or write I just write or talk about what someone else wrote or said. It's something about this need I referred to the other day about sharing personal obsessions, or perhaps it's just about fearing silence, or the idea of silence.  Today, however, I am not falling back on this simple technique, although so far it seems like I am in fact doing quite a good job of filling space with nothing. No, I thought about Roman Opalka - quoted above, with an example of his attempt to paint numbers from 0 to infinity - because I have just done the calculations for the end of the month and I found myself jotting down a lot of numbers on Post-It notes. Like this: September & October: 631.70 km. 54.97 h...
Read more