Lemon Bars

June 9, 2011. 

Stats: 3.0 miles; 33 min; HR 157/180; 492 cal.

This was not the plan. I did not intend to write every single day, and I probably won't. But writing things down helps me remember them, helps me process them, and helps me write better. You'll thank me in future posts. You're welcome.


I added some distance today, worried (completely irrationally) that my body would just get too used to the 2.6-mile run and would refuse to ever go any farther. At any rate, I discovered that it is more or less exactly 1.5 miles from my building around the entire curve of the Shedd Aquarium. That's a useful mile-post to have tucked away in my memory. 


It poured last night, and when I woke up this morning I was dreaming about hail. "I can't go out running in a hailstorm," my dream-self said to me. But I woke up anyway, and decided to chance it. There wasn't any hail. There wasn't much lightning left. A severe weather advisory from weather.com warned me not to cross any flowing streams, but I didn't really encounter any of those, either. 

There's a certain quality of light that I love, when the sky is gray and overcast, but the sun is low enough somewhere beneath the clouds to light everything up in an orange/yellow/honey light. By the time I got to work, it was just dark and gray outside. But in the early morning, between fits of rain, it was really nice.


There were far fewer runners and bikers out in the rain. I didn't even see a single one until I was already in the curve around the Shedd. I imagined that the people out running in this weather would be the really committed runners, and that it would be a sort of bond between us, and we would smile and nod knowingly as we passed each other. It turns out I was the only one who thought so. I waved, I smiled, and I got nothing back from anybody today. Not even a glance. Just as well. 


I ran almost the whole way. So that's something. Heading back out from the underpass beneath E. Solidarity, there's a little incline where I had to walk, briefly, because my HR was up. And my HR monitor beeped to warn me I was pounding more than 168 bpm as I ran back through the gravel path of the Gold Star Families Park & Memorial, but I didn't stop running there. Instead, I had a minor breakthrough. I was confident my HR would come back down, even if I kept running (it did) but, more importantly, my pounding heart actually felt good for the first time on these runs. Up until today, I always felt a little like I was forcing lemon bars and cookies through my arteries, or dust and garbage. It was nice to feel my blood thin out and circulate properly for a change. I didn't make it all the way up the pedestrian bridge at 18th St. without walking, but the rain started to fall more heavily as I got there. My first thought was of failure. Failed performance: I was too slow to beat the downpour(I was almost home). Failed judgment: if I'd only run the 2.6 miles, I could have beaten this rain home. But these thoughts lasted only about a second. And instead, I thought this: it sounds like the rain is cheering me on. I didn't care to get soaked. I was already wet with sweat, so why not rain? It was refreshing, but not cold. And as it rained harder, the cheers grew louder, urging me up the bridge and to finish my run strongly. 


Of course I had a lemon bar this morning with my coffee. So, there's that.