Yesterday just was not a good day. I am not sure what to blame it on, perhaps the lack of recent experience in running 3 miles or just a tough new loop that mapped out. Whatever it may be it didn't go well. It was later that night that my attitude didn't change when I saw on facebook that Ali is living with her current boyfriend. Is it stupid to be upset about that? Absolutely. Did that stop me from being so? Absolutely Not. My solution right now is to keep running and maybe eventually I will feel better about everything regarding that girl and that situation. I guess it did help me feel better about it today.
This morning didn't feel much better. The students I had in the social studies class I was subbing for, were very difficult to manage and they put in quite the terrible mood which caused me to take it out on students that (although still wrong) were probably not as deserving at the students that launched me into such a whirlwind. Regardless I was a very poor teacher today. How could I do something like put my emotions not only into my jobs but also effecting the students' experience in the classroom?
What kind of teacher is that? It's after days like today, where I don't think that I am going to be a good teacher at all. I will be nothing but a student's poor experience through their high school career. But my run today made me feel better about even that.
I was thinking about my run yesterday and my run on saturday and how they could have been so different....
1. One was after a monday and the other was at the beginning of a saturday
Well, there's nothing I can do about the day of the week.
2. One was on a scenic soft trail and the other on a hard street going past car dealerships and adult video stores.
I can't get in the habit of driving to the trail every day, and there aren't really any great trails around here that are longer than a mile loop.
3. One was a straight shot back and forth and the other was a loop.
Well, that was a difference, but normally a loop is much more easier to run then a straight shot back and forth. I mean always a loop was easier to run then a straight shot back and forth.
I always frowned upon running out a little and then back because I felt it to be a lack of creativity. Instead of thinking of a very interesting loop, you just run out a mile and then come back the same way, it's so boring and unoriginal. However, I was trying to get back out there and try to continue some great running and well I guess that doing what I seemed to do right at the valley was the best course of action at this point in the summer. Therefore I clocked a run that went a mile out toward the post road and then I would cross the post road and go another half mile, which ended right after I passed by my sister's old all girl high school. I felt good about this, I felt ready to tackle something new and for the first time I was excited about running a straight shot out and back.
Upon starting the run, I felt strange. I felt like I was going fast. I probably wasn't, at least by high school cross country standards, but at the same time, I felt like I was trying very hard. I felt good, and I kept this up until I hit a very busy road near the highway called Oranoque. It's funny how a busy road just always seems to sound noisier even when there are no cars on it. This was not the case this time there were plenty of cars buzzing by my head, as if they were making a noble effort to slice my head off with their left rearview mirror. There was one landscaping truck that beeped at me. When they drove by I gave them a dirty look and mouthed fucked you. It's both infantile and pretty monotonous of an action but it brought me back into the code of the runner.
When I was running 10 miles a day, you really couldn't help but run on a busy road and then you couldn't help but have a confrontation with some asshole driving, who would either honk, yell, or do something else obnoxious to make you jump or get you pissed. The code of the runner, was to ignore and not let it phase you or at least that was the honorable thing to do. What us high schoolers did was either flip them off, tell them to fuck themselves, kick their bumper at a stop light, or quietly wish for them to wrap their car around a tree. My favorite thing to do would be to respond to the extremely original and hilarious passerby comment of, "Run, Forrest, Run.", a comment that got old halfway through the first showing of the movie. Upon hearing this, I would speed up, pretend to carry a rifle, and yell in his accent, "I GOTTA FIND BUBBA!" I would either have a response of laughter or silence. The laughter was enjoyable, and the silence just meant they were too stupid to understand the movie its from, never have seen the movie, and therefore they are just pop culture hungry puppies that suck at the next big tit, which is also an enjoyable experience but just for me.
Anyway, I continued past the mile marker and crossed the post road. I didn't hit the button, because I don't live in New York, and I hate it when someone shuts down the entire intersection for 60 seconds so they can take that 3 second jog across one crosswalk. As I was running the last half mile before I was to turn around I felt great until I came to a realization that was troubling. It felt great. I took a look at my surroundings. I looked forward, behind me, and to the sides and realized that I was currently, gradually running downhill. This was only a problem because, I was going to have to run back up that gradual downhill.
A gradual downhill is the worst, when it comes to running. It will either slowly kill you, sometimes without you realizing it, or it can just last forever and wear you down. All of these thoughts were racing through my mind, as I turned around to face the hill head on. I knew how to do it, steady pace, constant, slowly pick it up. The hill got steeper at times and when it did I powered up it. I let the downhill take me to the post road and as it did the song, Freaks and Geeks by Childish Gambino came into my mind and it helped me power up that last hill past the highway.
I crawled the last half mile, I guess I started my kick on the hill way too early. But in this case, I still felt good. I suppose that finally, all the bad felt better than that one good thing: Running, and everything it gave me today.
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