Thought for the day

From an interview with Will Smith:

When you get on the treadmill you deprive yourself of oxygen. What kind of person you are will come out very, very quickly. You’re either the type of person who will say you’re going to run three miles or you stop the treadmill at 2.94 and you hit it and you call 2.94 three miles, or you get off after a mile, or you’re the type of person that runs hard through the finish line and when you get to 3.0 you realize, “God, I could really do 5,” and you go ahead and do two more. And that little person talks to you and says, “Man, do you feel our knee? We should stop. I feel we should stop ourselves right now. This is not healthy anymore.” When you learn to get command over that person on that treadmill, you learn to get command over that person in your life.

This morning, I ran in the rain. I was talking to Sam after that, and I asked him if he knew why I did that. “I know! It’s because you’re signed up to run a race, and if you go to the race and it’s raining, you can’t say, ‘It’s raining and I can’t do it now.’ You have to run in the rain then, so you have to get ready to do it now.”

Gabe said, “Oh, so that’s why you were so wet yesterday.” No, yesterday was sunny. I was “so wet” because I took advantage of that sunshine and went on a two-hour bike ride. (Which was less puritanical than it might sound, since it was, in part, an attempt to make up for the excesses of some friends’ party the night before…)

This is one of the times of the year in which I’m sincerely grateful to be in Wisconsin. “Hot” is such a relative term. I ran in the rain this morning even though I could have waited until the kids would be at the playground later today, mostly because it’ll be “hot” then: about 82 degrees Fahrenheit. And it’s mid-July. And that’s the warmest it will have been all week. Of course, we do pay for the temperate summers when winter rolls around, but the other six months of the year that aren’t tundra-esque are beautiful. I like to scramble to finish the things I want to accomplish each day before 1:30, so that I have the period of time that the kids are out available for anything I want to do to relax. Yesterday’s bike ride was the very thing my soul needed. I wonder if I could use this afternoon to go replace my motion-control shoes; I’ve already replaced my lighter-weight running shoes for my shorter training runs, but I don’t like to wear them for long runs, and I’ve got fourteen miles scheduled for Saturday (when the temperatures are supposed to max out in the upper sixties!).

Unrelated, I’m thinking maybe pancakes for supper tonight.