And we're off

Today was the unceremonious kick-off for training for the 3M Austin Half-Marathon.

I woke up at 5:40 and hauled my butt—and the wife’s—over the gym by 6:15. Although for some reason, without the wife it only takes 20 minutes to leave the house. Grrr. If there is one thing that bothers me most it’s when people mess with my routine, I only put up with this disruption because, well, it’s my wife and she puts up with all my crap (like waking up at 5:40 to go running).

When I get to the gym, I realize that I’ve put on the wrong glasses. I have regular glasses and exercise glasses. Why? Back in the day, the exercise glasses started life as regular glasses, but then I realized that they were getting green and gunky with all the sweat from running. In order to avoid this happening to future glasses I got a new pair of regular glasses but held on to the old pair and used them exclusively for running. Now it’s about four years later and I have the same exercise glasses—even though my prescription has changed. Lately, I’ve realized a second benefit to these glasses: the ends of the legs curve around my ears so the glasses don’t slide or move. This is unlike my regular glasses, which, if I tried to run with them, would fall off the second I started sweating.

(And why no contacts? 1) I can’t get the friggin’ things on and 2) do you know how much contacts go for people with an astigmatism?!)

So I have to run without my glasses. Not the first time I’ve had to do this. Basically, it’s the same as normal running except that I can’t read squat—making for an interesting run since I can’t see anything on the treadmill’s dashboard. I start off fine with the first 800m repeat @ an 8:20 pace. And then, when I’m about to start my second 800m, I start hitting buttons. Since I can’t see anything, I end up hitting the “pause” button instead of the “increase speed” button and suddenly the treadmill slows to a halt. In an effort to correct this I hit the “pause” button again, since I think that will undo the pause. Nope. Doing that actually turns off the machine. Damn you Precor! Why are all your buttons black?

I utter an “oh shit” and start the machine again. At least I hadn’t started the repeat yet.

The rest of the run was uneventful, except for my stomach protesting the early morning run. Another grrr. A not-too-difficult five 800m repeats under my belt, hooray. I can put a big ol’ check in the box next to Day One. Now I just have to keep this up for another 10 weeks and I’ll be cruising through Austin at a superstar 8:00 pace. Or so says Ryan Hall, my personal Half-Marathon training coach.