Day 3: My 1st Training Run and Weird Experience

This morning, Jess reminded me that you don't run in events by talking about them let alone blogging about them and left for work but not before delivering her ultimatum... "You must go for a run today".

The weather here today is crappy at best, it's warm and sticky but with misty rain at the same time. Anyhow I realized that I needed to get off my ass quickly because there is only 171 days left to get myself in shape to get around that course.

And so I decided to push it from day 1, at least from an out of shape fool like myself. The challenge 3.5 miles!!!

I got ready, did the mandatory stretches and the likes. Hydrated a little bit and set off... Man did it feel good... I was running at a pace that I hadn't been able to manage in years.. I felt the wind at my back, my feet landing on the pavement like they were landing on cushions and leaving the ground like I had just tipped a hot coal... I was flying. I thought I could look for a really decent time in this Marathon and maybe I should start thinking about entering some road races around New England...
All this was racing through my mind when I had to stop at an intersection to let a car turn. When suddenly i started to pay attention to my running partner a.k.a my body!! I noticed that my lungs were on fire.. i was shattered and I looked back and realized that I had covered a magical distance of 3 blocks and short ones at that.

So I pressed on, I was determined to finish the 3.5 miles, if I had to crawl. I'd like to say I did it without stopping but I had to walk 3 times (the most I've ever had to stop on that particular run) my head was just not in it today for some reason.

One very notable thing did happen on the run and it was this.. I was running around Fresh Pond and there were only a few people around and as I passed one particularly large tree there was a loud BOOM! and the tree collapsed into the pond. I just happened to pass by as this was happening and thought about how long it had been there and why at that particular moment in time the tree collapsed. Most people have heard of the Butterfly effect of chaos or have heard the term.. "If a Butterfly flaps his wings...." Well the collapse of the tree made me think that perhaps the slight breeze caused by my passing by had somehow contributed to the collapse of the tree.
Is this a sign that by undertaking the task of running the NYC Marathon for Livestrong can in some small way contribute to the collapse of the barriers that cancer has managed to erect before us? I'd like to think so.

The rest of the run was uneventful and I managed to make it the rest of the way without having to stop...

I've got a long way to go.