Sunday, October 07, 2007

Context is Key

Crawled out of bed late this morning, still exhausted from yesterday's long hard day of cleaning out the basement and garage (fall cleaning/nesting), organizing anything I could get my hands on (nesting), scrubbing (nesting) and disinfecting (nesting) and mopping (nesting) and general party prep mayhem (baby shower is next Saturday, nearly 70 guests expected, some of whom are family traveling 500 miles who have never seen my house... perfect excuse to let the OCD loose on the house cleaning). Throw in a little awake-since-4 insomnia and I was so not ready to face the yard work this morning.

Cause that mulch? It ain't gonna spread itself. And that dead lilac just keeps looking deader. At least the weeds seem to be doing just fine on their own.

Besides, it's nearly 80 damn degrees at 9 am! In OCTOBER!!

So instead of strapping on the garden gloves and hauling out the wheelbarrow, I plopped down in front of the Chicago Marathon coverage. They leaders, of course, were already at mile 14. (I figure I'm doing better than last time I watched it, when I made it out of bed just as they were crossing the finish line. If I'm not careful, at this rate I'm going to turn into one of those "morning people.")

As I dug into my Nutella-schmeared bagel I heard this little nugget...

Announcer #1: The lead pack is down to 6 from 11. How far back have the others fallen?
Announcer #2: Oh, they're WAY back. At least 25-30... (My brain inserts the word MINUTES)... seconds...

He said "seconds" as seriously as if it HAD been minutes.

I laughed so hard the dog looked at me funny. Were I running on this lovely fall day (*insert dripping sarcasm here - those poor guys are running in record high temps*) I'd be roughly 5 hours behind. THAT'S whatcha call "way back," Mr. Announcer Guy.

A few minutes later he was talking about their pace and saying how the lead pack had done the last several miles at a sub 4:50 pace. My first thought was "hey, that's not all that far off my marathon goal..." THEN it hit me. (Feel free to laugh at my idiocy. But in my defense, I'm on like 4 hours sleep.)

Yeah. 4:50/mile is SO TOTALLY DIFFERENT from my dream of running a sub 5 HOUR marathon. Hee hee. But for one brief shining, millisecond my hormone-addled, sleep-deprived brain fancied itself in the same league as the Kenyan pace bunnies. And that's not a bad way to start the day : )

5 comments:

Herself, the GeekGirl said...

Wanna trade? It was 45 degrees and windy this morning. 45 AND WINDY. So much for my bike ride. I'm a cold weenie.

LBTEPA said...

one of my running affirmations is ' I run like a Kenyan' - then I catch sight of my reflection :(
How lucky you are that they televise the big marathons!
Take care mate - the rellies have come to see you not the house

Sixteen Chickens said...

Holy crap, sub 4:50 miles, well shit, I'm going back to bed. ;)

Steve Stenzel said...

That's great! They're running around your goal time - that's not so unrealistic!!

; )

Lack of sleep will do that....

TRI TO BE FUNNY said...

Sub 4:50s on an incredibly hot day--I HATE those guys :-)