Seven Miles I Didn’t Mean To Run

I meant to run about four or five miles this morning. I wound up with seven miles. It was not my fault, really.

I run on Sundays for two main reasons: to get my better half a newspaper, and it’s the one day when I can get a long run into my weekly schedule. So I did my usual trek to the nearest grocery store and … no papers.

I ran laps around the parking lot. Laps around the bank in the parking lot. Laps around the delivery dock in the back of the grocery store. Forty-five minutes and no papers. I finally left, realizing my hydration pack would run out of water not long after my legs would likely die, and the heat would creep up from miserable to unbearable.

I stopped at a drugstore nearby. No papers. I kept running to a small quick-stop grocery and found them. A nice big stack of newspapers. At that point, six and a half miles in, I could not muster the energy to get mad about this. Just bought it and finished the final half-mile.

Of course, the newspaper thing was maddening in a first-world-problems kind of way. However, this run does take me over the halfway mark in the half-marathon training. It’s hard to be bothered about the whole thing when it contributes positively to a goal.

I bought some new running kits and picked up two new sets of orthotic inserts. And the calendar is filling in. And there is an empty shelf for this season’s running shirt collection.

About five weeks to go.