So, How Many Hats Do You Wear?

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Pensacola, Florida, United States
Husband. *Dog Dad.* Instructional Systems Specialist. Runner. (Swim-challenged) Triathlete (on hiatus). USATF LDR Surveyor. USAT (Elite Rules) CRO/2, NTO/1. RRCA Rep., FL (North). Observer Of The Human Condition.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Questions Of Our Age

I'm not quite certain whether I'd freak out over that particular observation. I guess I'd be more jealous over the fact some people have jobs that permit them to sit around a Starbucks' (or any other coffee shop) on 11 in the morning on a Monday. Obviously, some of them are spooling up for an afternoon/evening of work...something I used to do. But there have to be some people with little more to do (I was going to say better, but who am I to judge?) than caffeinate themselves into oblivion, read all 15 volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Civilization, and ponder their navel.
Where do I get a job like that?
Even the moments when I feel inspired to bore people to death with passages of nothingness I think about how bad it would have to be to be a professional writer. There was a terribly funny cartoon drawn by Shannon Wheeler, which I think I referenced a little over a year ago; in essence, it said Anything You Get Paid To Do S*cks. Sometimes there's no music, no art, no television programming, and no life experience that will provide sufficient inspiration for a writer's blathering.
Here's a good question: Why do electronic devices which can last for years in the hands of other runners of equivalent fitness (and equivalent sweat-producing properties) die on me in the space of a year (if I'm fortunate)? It's not like I go out in the pouring rain with them, or leave them in direct sunlight, dusty conditions, near angry (or incontinent) canines/felines/ovines/bovines, whack them against walls or more-resilient structures, etc. These little boogers will last their warranty, then BRZZAAAP! They croak on me. I complained about this before when my last MP3 player went toes (or in this case, case) up. Perhaps I need to stop buying electronic cr*p from eBay. After my Nike Triax SDM went kaput the other weekend, I decided it was time to go back to what Chuckie V(eylupek) called caveman running. No heart rate, save for fingers on carotid pulsation. No distance measurement, save for Gmap Pedometer or MapMyTri. Go back to running by feel. Yes. That's it, young Skywalker. Trust your feelings, you know I am your father.
Of course, the positives of this decision are that I spend less time dumping cr*p into Excel spreadsheet files on my computer. The negatives are that I have less hard data to look back upon when I overtrain myself into that old iliotibial band stress/achilles' tendonitis situation again.
Maybe if I trust the physiological data, including the way I feel in the morning, I might not work myself into a stiff-legged shuffle five or six days a week...or have the deep, unrelenting need for more sleep...or the irrational desire for junk foods I haven't snacked upon since last spring. Then I won't ask myself that other question of the age: How the #@*% did I gain all that weight!?

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