With Great Power...

...comes great responsibility. I like to remind myself of this fact every time I write a blog post. And by "great power," I mean the power I have to look/sound like a complete idiot/asshole/moron/some other flavor of undesirable to strangers by writing things on the internet. Earlier today I wrote a bitchy/moany/whiney post, then re-read it this evening & deleted it because *I* found it annoying and that is never a good sign. You're welcome, future self.

Instead, I just have some Things to share. (I am not blogger-chic/-trendy enough to choose a number that starts with the same phoneme as the day of the week, so apologies for that. Frankly, I'm not totally clear on what day of the week it even is right now, so maybe it's just as well.) I will warn you ahead of time that they might not have much of a "thesis" or "point" or "basic coherency" or any of those other mainstream fancy pants writin' conventions that the Elitist Establishment is always pushing. That's life sometimes. Or blogging. Or whatever.

1) First, on the off chance that you don't read this girl's blog, then OMG you really must start. While I enjoy reading many, many blogs for a myriad of different reasons, I read Shelby's mainly because it never fails to crack me right the hell up and there aren't too many blogs that I find legitimately, consistently hilarious in a way that comes across as completely genuine and natural. Seriously. This is the case even when it's not a "funny" post. (Also she is a baddass of a runner.)

Today (or at least sometime recently) she wrote a post called "Two Things I Don't Get," and as I read it I found myself nodding in enthusiastic agreement and having that "OH THANK GOD IT'S NOT JUST ME" moment of relief you have when you really just can't believe it's just you, but no one else is saying anything, and you don't want to say anything either because you don't want to sound like an asshole. According to my calculations, though, even if people think that Shelby is an asshole for writing it out loud and I am an asshole for agreeing with her out loud, then the total asshole-perception is divided equally between the two of us, so people will think that each of us is only half as much of an asshole as they would have thought we were otherwise. And that is better.

(Update - About a billion people have now left comments on Shelby's post being like OMG ME TOO THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS, so the way I figure, each of our total perceived assholery is given by the equation A_p = (A_t/n) where A_p = how much the blogosphere perceives any one person to be an asshole for saying these things out loud, A_t = how much the blogosphere would think ONE person was an asshole for saying them, and n is the total number of people who say or agree with them. Fields Medal, please.)

Get it? It's a dust buster, which sucks? The amount of effort I put into finding this image is about equivalent to how pleasant my runs have been lately.

2) The title of my original whiney/bitchy post was going to be "This Week Sucks." (Subtle, no?) But then I remembered that as a denizen of the run-blogging world, I should take special care never to be too negative lest I discourage and depress others. Yet I also hear that I should be careful never to get TOO sunshine-and-unicorns about my running when it is going well, because that is apparently equally off-putting and not gritty and "real" enough, and people have totally stopped reading blogs over it. Obviously I work *extremely* hard to ensure that my blog has precisely the right balance of peppy, enthusiastic posts to gritty, "real" ones, and I feared that one entitled "This Week Sucks" may have been a bridge too far in one direction.

But for reals, y'all, this week sucks. I haven't had a good run since my track workout Tuesday a week & a half ago. Ever since then I've been completely exhausted, super low on stamina (ie, the last couple miles of a six mile easy run feels like the last miles of a marathon), or dealing with some kind of physical pain significant enough to harsh my mellow. And that's when I've been able to run at all.

Part of this I'm sure was jumping from ~20 mpw to nearly 40 in one week. Part of it has probably been not sleeping enough. Part of it is also probably that I keep forgetting that Sparring Night at the dojo (ie, advanced practitioners from a variety of martial disciplines show up & fight for two hours) is more or less equivalent to a hard 10K in terms of the physical wear & tear on my body. I'm pretty sure I've lost about 20 potential miles to that alone. On the other hand, my sparring is not great and I have a freaking black belt test somewhere in the not-too-dim-&-misty future, so you know. Trade-offs.

But still. I've been bummed that I can't run as much/well as I've wanted too lately & that takes its toll on my mood.

3.Once upon a time there was a run-blogger who was like, "What's up with all the BLACK running tights? Is this is a freaking FUNERAL? An East Coast social event? Why is that the ONLY color of running tights that anyone ever wears?" Then she got super bold & ordered a pair of slate gray running tights & thought they were SUPER cool.

Then she went for a run in them & finally understood why people pretty much only ever wear black running tights.

I took a picture. Then I chickened out & decided I don't have the guts to post said picture on the internet. (See opening line above.) So I deleted it. Let's just say that there is a sweating issue that happens and there is a certain pattern to it and it is not pretty in a color where you can actually see it.

It kind of reminded me of that time that group of dude cyclists went with the red shorts. Not because of all the genitals, but more because it reminded me to appreciate the general forgivingness / camouflage properties of black when it comes to spandex.

I'm sorry. Or you're welcome. Or y'know. Whatever.