Reasons to Not Run

My 100 mile week was foiled by a mystery illness. First I had a sore throat type thing, and then I got a thing where I almost threw up a lot, but instead I didn’t even throw up a little bit. I know you know what I’m talking about – when your mouth gets all full of spit and you can’t stop burping and every burp feels like it might be a throw up. My parents just recovered from a horrible stomach flu with actual throw up, so I was even more convinced that I was about to throw up all the time. But, like I said, I didn’t actually ever throw up.

Luckily I got a good run in on Monday, when I ran from the zoo to the Pittock Mansion and back, on the Wildwood trail. I only set out to do a 4 mile run, but I couldn’t really tell when I had run 2 miles, and then I got to the sign that says the Pittock Mansion is only 1 mile away, and who can resist that? I only figured out that it was a 7.5 mile run when I went home and looked it up. I think that ultimately, this is because of how hard my body is getting, so it doesn’t really notice the difference between 4 and 7.5 miles anymore.

My goal was to do about 35 this week (if for some reason I wasn’t able to make it to the 100 I promised), because I’m thinking about doing the Timberline Marathon in June. I guess I’ll pick back up next week and see how things go. In the mean time, please enjoy my top ten reasons for not going running:

1. sickness (like right now)
2. I don’t have Pascal with me, and I feel bad about running without him
3. I’m bored of all the running routes around my house, but driving somewhere to run somehow seems to defeat the purpose
4. it’s too cold and/or rainy
5. I’m too hungry
6. I’m too full
7. the internet
8. my running skirt is at the dry cleaners
9. I’m drunk
10. running loses in the endless battle of nap v. run

90% of the time that I want to run and don’t, it’s for reason number 10. Nap beats run almost every time. I’d love to hear your other reasons for not running. There are so many.

Miles run this week: 17
Miles run in 2010: 228.5

PS. To keep things circular, I feel obligated to post a link to Read It And Weep, a podcast I was so lucky to guest star in this week. Listen to it if you want, but more importantly, there’s a link there to my blog, so you can enjoy jumping back and forth from this blog to their podcast site. This is an example of how my number 7 reason for not going running comes into action.