Friday, January 20, 2012

Lunacy Loves Company

1/19/12     Despite an inch of fresh snow on the ground that had been accumulating for an hour or so, by 9pm I still hadn’t received a phone call from either of the two guys I meet up with every Thursday night at MHS for our weekly track workout. Figuring they were as crazy as I was, willing to run the scheduled 6x800 repeats in any passable conditions, I changed into my running gear before leaving work in order to be ready to run as soon as I parked at the track.
     Shortly after parking and removing my warm-up pants and jacket in the car, I looked through the windshield to see Matt pushing a shovel as he ran around the inside lane of the track. He was a human snowplow, removing enough snow for us to still get in our track work for the week. Seconds after seeing him shovel-jogging by and laughing to myself, my cell phone rang. I immediately knew it was Paul calling to confirm our insanity of following through with our weekly meeting at the track, so I answered the phone with, “Hey Paul, before you say anything, yes, both of us are here at the track and what’s even better is that I just looked up to see Matt shoveling the inside lane of the track for our 800s tonight.”
     “Alright, I’m dressed and leaving the house now, see you guys in about 10 minutes,” Paul replied as if he already knew before calling that we’d somehow find a way to get the run done. By the time I got out to the track to tell Matt that Paul was on his way, he had already shoveled the 400 meters of lane one, lane two, and was finishing up lane three. The narrow line of snow separating the three lanes that had been shoveled resembled miniature jersey barriers brilliantly illustrated our obsession to always try to log our runs on their scheduled days. Shoveling one lane would have been more than enough motivation to make it through all of the 6 repeats of 2 laps each, but seeing three neat, symmetrical and parallel lanes stretching 400 meters around the oval was enough motivation to inspire us on many snowy nights to come.
     Our extended warm-up mileage was mostly to tamp down lane one as much as possible before starting our first 800 but also to reassure our feet that they wouldn’t slip as long as we were cautious and stuck to our target paces. With some divine intervention and a bit of luck, the snow fell lighter and less frequently during the 800 meter repeats making the paths good enough for us to hit similar times that we did the previous week. Nobody slipped and fell, even when jumping over the mini snow barriers into lanes two and three to safely pass by during the intervals. And it wasn’t even that cold outside before, during, or after our workout. I was warm enough to stick around and wait as Paul finished up a few extra 800s so I could have him take some pictures to prove how crazy runners can be when they put their minds to it. I also wanted some great photos of what we had done to include in this entry. Thanks again Paul!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment