are no match for a 3 year old.
I was supposed to run 3 times this week, with my long run being today. Normally, I try to space out my runs (Tu-Th-Sat, or Tu-Fr-Su) to give myself a little bit of recovery time. I can go two days in a row, but it's not fun. This week, however, I didn't quite feel right on Friday. I had done an extra CrossFit workout on Thursday night, and it was all legs. So, I planned on an early morning run yesterday & a long run today. Not an ideal schedule, but I was hoping that with a little bit of luck, I could make it work.
I got the Saturday morning run in, and it went fine. My base pace is picking up a bit, so I finished 5.5 miles in a better time than I expected. Even better, I managed to get up at 7AM to do it. That gave me plenty of time to rest during the day. I figured that if I pushed off today's long run until mid-morning or early afternoon, that'd be 24+ hours of rest.
Enter the 3 year old.
Yesterday, our family happened to have a picnic/barbecue in Lindley Meadow (incidentally, weather in SF has been really nice lately). I helped set up, grabbed a plate of food, and sat down for a leisurely few hours. There were a few kids there, and one of them wanted to play with me. I don't know why, but she specifically asked "come run with me." Maybe it was because there was a bunch of open space, maybe it was because of the nice weather, or maybe one of her parents planted the suggestion in her head to tire her out. Either way, she specifically asked for the one thing that I was hoping to avoid.
As a momentary aside, I try to do one good deed a week. It started out as a joke in an IM conversation, but somehow it became a part of my life. Given that it started out as a joke, there are some very interesting things that get counted as a good deed. Still, I do try to stick to it, and when given an opportunity for a legitimate good deed, I'll usually follow through (particularly if it's getting to be the end of the week & I haven't already counted something).
So, yeah, want to guess what my good deed was for this week? All in all, I probably let this kid chase me for a good 45 minutes. Not that bad in the long run (unintentional pun, I swear), but there was that whole "I ran 5.5 miles earlier" thing to contend with. It was actually pretty fun, and the legs felt okay during that time. But therein lies the problem, and shows you just how devious this 3 year old's plot was.
We transitioned to hide & seek, and since the legs felt okay, I played up the searching with light jogs. If you've ever played hide & seek with a little kid, you know it's a good idea to exaggerate. You pretend you don't see their legs sticking out from under the table, or that you can't hear them giggling. Then, you loudly exclaim, "I don't know where [kid] is, maybe they're [anywhere but the table]." You can even make direct eye contact, but so long as you don't acknowledge it, and you keep up the game, the kid will have a blast. Anyhow, repeat this a few times, and then you eventually find them after a long & exhaustive search. So yeah, exaggeration = good. Which means jogging to the place you're pretending to look for them = good. Make that about 90 minutes of light jogging.
By now, the muscles in my legs were warm, which meant two things: 1) I didn't feel any soreness, and 2) it seemed like a good idea to kick around a soccer ball, toss around a football, and pitch/bat with a plastic bat/tennis ball with some of the other adults. Playing with adults requires more than light jogging, so I even managed to work up a sweat with the football. Oh, and did I mention that we only had 3 or 4 people when people were batting? If you're in the outfield (and everyone is at some point), you get to run around a bit to chase fly balls. So, to recap, 90 minutes of light jogging, another 90 minutes total of actual running.
Now, at this point, I know some of you might come to a silly conclusion like, "you did this to yourself, quit yer whining." Let me assure you, I am an innocent victim in all this. Little kids are notorious for being able to get stuff from adults, and this kid is no different. Also, I submit to the jury that the kid's parents didn't feel like running around, so I distinctly heard, "hm, not right now. Maybe if you ask Sam, he'll play with you." Collusion, I say! The whole thing was probably set up as soon as they got out of the car, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, the moment we started with the chasing, I was done for. Playing with little kids is a slippery slope - the running around was the gateway form of exercise, if you will. And because the person running the scam is about 2 feet high, you forget that you're getting scammed. Don't be fooled, this little mastermind knew what was up (she's a really smart kid, actually). I can see how you'd potentially be tricked into thinking this is all my fault, but it wasn't.
So, with that little detail out of the way, fast forward to this morning. My innocent self wakes up this morning, innocently walks to the bathroom, and realizes that the innocent knees are feeling a little less innocent than usual (i.e., sore). That's normally a sign that my body is fatigued, and I've learned to avoid running too much or too hard when my knees feel like that. That's also why I shoot for at least a day of rest, because that's about how long it'll take for that feeling to go away. So, I now have a problem: today is supposed to be my long run, my knees are sore, and I'm not supposed to run long distances on sore knees.
Eventually, discretion won out, so I decided to postpone my run until next week. I still have plenty of time before the half-marathon, so there's no point in risking an unnecessary injury. I'm going running on Tuesday with some friends, so I'll push myself then to avoid feeling lazy. Also, I'm making up my own schedule at this point anyway (I'm past the 12 week program to which someone else referred me), so I can treat this week as a recovery week by not running quite as much. I still got 11 miles in this week, so it's not like I completed slacked off.
Regardless, I was conned by a 3 year old. Let my tale be a warning to you, lest you find yourself in a similar predicament.
I was supposed to run 3 times this week, with my long run being today. Normally, I try to space out my runs (Tu-Th-Sat, or Tu-Fr-Su) to give myself a little bit of recovery time. I can go two days in a row, but it's not fun. This week, however, I didn't quite feel right on Friday. I had done an extra CrossFit workout on Thursday night, and it was all legs. So, I planned on an early morning run yesterday & a long run today. Not an ideal schedule, but I was hoping that with a little bit of luck, I could make it work.
I got the Saturday morning run in, and it went fine. My base pace is picking up a bit, so I finished 5.5 miles in a better time than I expected. Even better, I managed to get up at 7AM to do it. That gave me plenty of time to rest during the day. I figured that if I pushed off today's long run until mid-morning or early afternoon, that'd be 24+ hours of rest.
Enter the 3 year old.
Yesterday, our family happened to have a picnic/barbecue in Lindley Meadow (incidentally, weather in SF has been really nice lately). I helped set up, grabbed a plate of food, and sat down for a leisurely few hours. There were a few kids there, and one of them wanted to play with me. I don't know why, but she specifically asked "come run with me." Maybe it was because there was a bunch of open space, maybe it was because of the nice weather, or maybe one of her parents planted the suggestion in her head to tire her out. Either way, she specifically asked for the one thing that I was hoping to avoid.
As a momentary aside, I try to do one good deed a week. It started out as a joke in an IM conversation, but somehow it became a part of my life. Given that it started out as a joke, there are some very interesting things that get counted as a good deed. Still, I do try to stick to it, and when given an opportunity for a legitimate good deed, I'll usually follow through (particularly if it's getting to be the end of the week & I haven't already counted something).
So, yeah, want to guess what my good deed was for this week? All in all, I probably let this kid chase me for a good 45 minutes. Not that bad in the long run (unintentional pun, I swear), but there was that whole "I ran 5.5 miles earlier" thing to contend with. It was actually pretty fun, and the legs felt okay during that time. But therein lies the problem, and shows you just how devious this 3 year old's plot was.
We transitioned to hide & seek, and since the legs felt okay, I played up the searching with light jogs. If you've ever played hide & seek with a little kid, you know it's a good idea to exaggerate. You pretend you don't see their legs sticking out from under the table, or that you can't hear them giggling. Then, you loudly exclaim, "I don't know where [kid] is, maybe they're [anywhere but the table]." You can even make direct eye contact, but so long as you don't acknowledge it, and you keep up the game, the kid will have a blast. Anyhow, repeat this a few times, and then you eventually find them after a long & exhaustive search. So yeah, exaggeration = good. Which means jogging to the place you're pretending to look for them = good. Make that about 90 minutes of light jogging.
By now, the muscles in my legs were warm, which meant two things: 1) I didn't feel any soreness, and 2) it seemed like a good idea to kick around a soccer ball, toss around a football, and pitch/bat with a plastic bat/tennis ball with some of the other adults. Playing with adults requires more than light jogging, so I even managed to work up a sweat with the football. Oh, and did I mention that we only had 3 or 4 people when people were batting? If you're in the outfield (and everyone is at some point), you get to run around a bit to chase fly balls. So, to recap, 90 minutes of light jogging, another 90 minutes total of actual running.
Now, at this point, I know some of you might come to a silly conclusion like, "you did this to yourself, quit yer whining." Let me assure you, I am an innocent victim in all this. Little kids are notorious for being able to get stuff from adults, and this kid is no different. Also, I submit to the jury that the kid's parents didn't feel like running around, so I distinctly heard, "hm, not right now. Maybe if you ask Sam, he'll play with you." Collusion, I say! The whole thing was probably set up as soon as they got out of the car, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, the moment we started with the chasing, I was done for. Playing with little kids is a slippery slope - the running around was the gateway form of exercise, if you will. And because the person running the scam is about 2 feet high, you forget that you're getting scammed. Don't be fooled, this little mastermind knew what was up (she's a really smart kid, actually). I can see how you'd potentially be tricked into thinking this is all my fault, but it wasn't.
So, with that little detail out of the way, fast forward to this morning. My innocent self wakes up this morning, innocently walks to the bathroom, and realizes that the innocent knees are feeling a little less innocent than usual (i.e., sore). That's normally a sign that my body is fatigued, and I've learned to avoid running too much or too hard when my knees feel like that. That's also why I shoot for at least a day of rest, because that's about how long it'll take for that feeling to go away. So, I now have a problem: today is supposed to be my long run, my knees are sore, and I'm not supposed to run long distances on sore knees.
Eventually, discretion won out, so I decided to postpone my run until next week. I still have plenty of time before the half-marathon, so there's no point in risking an unnecessary injury. I'm going running on Tuesday with some friends, so I'll push myself then to avoid feeling lazy. Also, I'm making up my own schedule at this point anyway (I'm past the 12 week program to which someone else referred me), so I can treat this week as a recovery week by not running quite as much. I still got 11 miles in this week, so it's not like I completed slacked off.
Regardless, I was conned by a 3 year old. Let my tale be a warning to you, lest you find yourself in a similar predicament.
Comments
Post a Comment