Long Run

I love hotels. M and I spent the night at a nice one in Boston last night, after M's company's "holiday" party (a little late to call it that, imo); JF stayed overnight with this kids at home. Hotel rooms are soo nice, antiseptic (in a good way), anonymous, and dark, really dark (we usually have hall/bathroom lights on at home with the kids), cozy, sealed, solid, safe, permanent. I like what Moby sez about hotel rooms in his latest album, Hotel:

"why hotel? A variety of reasons, but here's one of them... hotels fascinate me in that they're incredibly intimate spaces that are scoured every 24 hours and made to look completely anonymous. people sleep in hotel rooms and cry in hotel rooms and bathe in hotel rooms and have sex in hotel rooms and start relationships in hotel rooms and end relationships in hotel rooms and etc and etc, but yet every time we check into a hotel room we feel as if we're the first guest and we get very upset if there's any remnant of a previous guests stay. something about this idea, that intimate spaces can be wiped clean every 24 hours, fascinates me. that we enter a hotel room and it becomes our biological home for a while and then we leave. in some way it's similar to the human condition. we exist and we strive and we love and we cry and we laugh and we run around and we sleep and we build things and we have sex and then we die, and, not sound too depressing the world is wiped clean of our biological presence. which, from my perspective, makes out brief biological time here all the more precious due to it's relative brevity."

Anyway, up and out by 10am, slightly, silently, stressing about my long run I'd need to run. Need to get over that - just forget it until I have to do it, it's (almost) always not as difficult as I'd imagined. Anyway, sunny, cold, but not too cold a day.

Went up to me Mum's in NH; her sister, my aunt, and her so, my cousin K, are visiting - haven't seen them in like 30 years, 1976. How weird. But fortunately, it wasn't weird, blood counts, shared genes, shared memories, Grandma, Grandpa. K was 6 the last time I saw him, I was 16, now he's 36, a whole half a lifetime, zip. I did feel like a bit of a jerk at first because just about as soon as we got there, I took off for a long run; it was the only time this weekend I could fit it in. A less obsessed runner would have said screw it, time to visit with family, but I'm a little selfish right now I guess, attempting this marathon training thing. Fortunately, no problem, no one missed me :-), M, J, and Z played games (Sorry, Masterpiece) and visited with everyone.

I'd originally planned on running 13.something, then decided to shorten it to 11 to reduce my time away from family; I mapped out a route using Google Pedometer, which seems very accurate (at least as accurate as my bike odometer - I measured my Lake Quannapowitt loop). So during the run, I took a wrong turn, improvised, and ended up running 12.1 miles. Not bad, slightly stressful not being 100% sure I was on the right track, pretty fatigued by the end of the first hour. Ended with a time of 1:25:34 (7:04 pace) - a little faster than I'd thought. Felt my left shin for a bit during the first couple miles, then occasionally after, then a couple sharp pains after, walking (walked/jogged another quarter with Z after I got back - could hardly keep up!). Seem to be recovering okay though.