I may have picked the wrong week to give up sitting. Or maybe it was the right week. It is hard to tell. I hopped on what appears to be a small bandwagon and got a stand-up desk at work. Mainly in the hopes that it might help me avoid any more of the psoas-induced three-day lockups I've experienced three or four times in the past two years.1 So far, I like it. I didn't go for any transition period. I just stood all week. One side effect: tired legs. I am (mostly) sure I'll get over that. Another side effect: I feel like I walk differently now. Sort of in a good way... I feel kind of "light". I don't know how else to describe that. Sort of like gravity isn't quite as strong anymore. Then again, I seem to be tripping over my own feet2 more often, which is a constant reminder that gravity is still out there.
Why might it have been the wrong week for this? Well, we also started working a little harder on some of our runs this week, and I'm just more tired in general. Wednesday's workout was not particularly difficult as a workout, but it became particularly difficult in the heat. Saturday's long run was in more forgiving weather, but we had a bit of extra speed thrown in at the end to even things out.
Back to Wednesday though. According to the great composer Wolfram Alpha3, it was 103 degrees when we started, but at least it had cooled down to a refreshing 37.54 by the time it was over, and the humidity was low. How hot is that? It's hot enough that I could smell myself. While I was running. That's quite a feat, considering that there was no breeze, and my nose generally leads the way. I am just glad I remembered my training towel this week.5 Why am I talking about the heat? Not to complain, but merely to set up the next thought, which is...
...And then an angel showed up at a water stop with a plastic tub full of frozen grapes. OMG. Please note the use of "OMG" here. I do not throw around my OMG's lightly. In fact, I don't throw them around at all. This might be the first time I've ever OMG'd anything in a public setting. But O.M.G. Those grapes were fantastic! They were like little purple spheres of heaven. Anyhow, the rest of the run, which wasn't much longer, was more tolerable because of the grapes. And it must be some kind of "thing"6, since someone had a tub of them after the long run on Saturday as well. They were just as heavenly then. I may have to stock up on frozen grapes.
I started this post off by talking about standing all week. Then I got all diverted figuring out how to make footnotes, then off on my grape tangent and now I can't remember where I was going with that original train of thought. So... I shall rename the post and say good night.
1. This involves a general inability to walk, stand, sit or lie down comfortably, and exactly 322 muttered curses during any given 24-hour period.
2. Or perhaps it's the feet of the tiny invisible people whose only purpose in life is to trip me.
3. Not really a composer's name.
4. Celsius.
5. My training towel is the towel I use on my car seat to protect it from the funk of forty-thousand steps. If it weren't for my training towel, I'd probably have to set fire to my car in some non-suspicious way after most of these summer runs.7
6. I am usually one of the last to know about "thing"s. Plus, I needed another footnote between the previous one and the next one.
7. So I could still collect the insurance money, of course.