Running in 2018

I've been using the same Running Ahead app for 7 years now and have a total of 9,625 miles. So my total for 2018 does not look great at 866 miles, when the average per year is 1,375. Unless I decide to train for a marathon again, I will not be likely to hit that average again. The most I ran last year was in December, 113 miles. Even this was an outlier, most months were low 70 to low 90. The first two months were 16 and 30 respectively.

What had happened is that my Achilles on both sides, but especially the left, were tender and sore. I tried to be very gentle for healing last Jan and Feb, but they didn't improve. With running, they have improved but are still not anywhere close to 100%.

My goal for 2019 is to average 90-100 miles/month and try to get some speed back. The girls got me a Garmin for Christmas and this might help, since it keeps track of highest speeds at different distances within a work-out. I think my best mile time (7:57/mile) since I got the watch was in an 8 mile run.

Smart-ass Remarks Come Into My Head, Unbidden

Yesterday, I was some 9 miles into an 11 mile run and finishing on the bike path. Ahead of me a ways, was a woman who had a lab and was towing a child's bike which had training wheels on it. There was no child in sight. I thought of saying, once I got to her, "That is so ambitious, We can barely get our dog to sit on command". Before I got to her, I thought of a better one, "If you had a border collie, you wouldn't need training wheels".

But I said neither thing. She toppled the bike a little before I caught her and she was distracted from righting it.

This morning, my wife and I were shopping and really, it is a one-person job. But things happen which make it nice to have a compatriot handy. The PA system came on and asked, "Please check if you have your own cart and if you have someone else's, please take it to the courtesy desk". This is so stupid: If your cart has been taken so completely that you don't recover it right away, then it probably has more of the other guy's stuff in it than your stuff--just start over! Why would you waste your time complaining to management? Nobody is going to return it. They will go back to their own cart and off-load into it. At that point they now have two and are not going to be able to bring both anywhere.

Soon after that, in the produce section, I saw an Asian guy put some vegetables into a cart and another Asian woman say, "Excuse me, that is my cart". My wife came over and I told her what I witnessed and added, "You see, to Asians, all carts look alike".

Yes, I am a bad person.