Normally, when I'm busy, I either have some sort of function to attend, or work to do. It's not necessarily boring (movies, meals, and parties all count as "functions to attend"), but it's very mundane. Not so much this weekend.
I'm training for a half-marathon, so I decided to join the Nike run club for one of their training runs on Saturday. My coworker recommended it, so I decided to give it a go. Now, I know that the Nike marathon is mostly for women (it's called the Nike Women's Marathon, so lay off the sexist label, huh?), and I know that Nike sponsors the training/run club. But did my brain connect the dots & realize that there wouldn't be too many other guys there? Nope. That could have been a good thing for me, but I was there to run 12+ miles. If I had time to chat someone up, I probably wasn't running hard enough (not to mention that my group didn't exactly entice me to gather the courage to ask for a number).
I decided to run at a 10:30 pace, also on the advice of this coworker. That's a little bit slower than my usual, but he said there'd be hills & he also warned me that it'd be my longest run to date. So, slower it was. The problem with that, however, was that my body naturally tried to pick up the pace when I wasn't paying attention. Anytime I looked around for oncoming traffic, saw something that caught my eye, or otherwise looked anywhere but straight ahead, I would start running a little bit faster. So, for 13.4 miles (we screwed up at the end & chopped off 0.6 miles by accident), I kept coming awfully close to invading anoother runner's personal space. Combined with the fact that I didn't want any of the women in my group to take that the wrong way, this made things slightly uncomfortable.
At one point, the pace leader said it'd be okay to run faster up this hill. So, I did, just to push my legs a bit & to get out of the pack. No one else did. Oh, and since I was on my own, I ran my usual pace. Remember that kid in school who wrecked all the curves & always got good grades? I was the running equivalent of that kid. Oddly enough, this did not ingratiate myself with the rest of my group any more than my Y chromosome did.
But, back to the point, I ran 13.4 miles that morning, so I was then sore all day long. I did some little things around the house, but I mostly just used the rest of the day to recover. So, odd reason for being unavailable #1: "I'm too sore from my morning exercise to come out to play."
Which brings us to reason number two. I spent a good chunk of my day today taking apart & putting back together my toilet. It had a bad wax seal, so I was tasked with replacing it. A toilet is a fairly simple contraption, but it's also an unwieldy contraption. An instruction like "empty out all of the water & turn it upside down" involved far more bending over, lifting, side-stepping, and annoyance than can be conveyed by that simple statement.
To keep this (relatively) short, I had to shut off the water, flush out as much of the water as possible, unscrew it from the ground, turn it upside to drain the remaining water, remove/clean the old wax seal, slap on the new seal, put in new screws, turn the toilet right side up & put it back, screw it back down, and then apply caulk to the base. All in all, I probably spent a good two to three hours doing that. The bright side, of course, is that it gave me odd reason for being unavailable #2: "I'm getting intimately acquainted with my toilet."
So, the next time you need an excuse to stay in, I humbly offer my weekend as material. Or you could just say you need to wash your hair. Your call, I suppose.
I'm training for a half-marathon, so I decided to join the Nike run club for one of their training runs on Saturday. My coworker recommended it, so I decided to give it a go. Now, I know that the Nike marathon is mostly for women (it's called the Nike Women's Marathon, so lay off the sexist label, huh?), and I know that Nike sponsors the training/run club. But did my brain connect the dots & realize that there wouldn't be too many other guys there? Nope. That could have been a good thing for me, but I was there to run 12+ miles. If I had time to chat someone up, I probably wasn't running hard enough (not to mention that my group didn't exactly entice me to gather the courage to ask for a number).
I decided to run at a 10:30 pace, also on the advice of this coworker. That's a little bit slower than my usual, but he said there'd be hills & he also warned me that it'd be my longest run to date. So, slower it was. The problem with that, however, was that my body naturally tried to pick up the pace when I wasn't paying attention. Anytime I looked around for oncoming traffic, saw something that caught my eye, or otherwise looked anywhere but straight ahead, I would start running a little bit faster. So, for 13.4 miles (we screwed up at the end & chopped off 0.6 miles by accident), I kept coming awfully close to invading anoother runner's personal space. Combined with the fact that I didn't want any of the women in my group to take that the wrong way, this made things slightly uncomfortable.
At one point, the pace leader said it'd be okay to run faster up this hill. So, I did, just to push my legs a bit & to get out of the pack. No one else did. Oh, and since I was on my own, I ran my usual pace. Remember that kid in school who wrecked all the curves & always got good grades? I was the running equivalent of that kid. Oddly enough, this did not ingratiate myself with the rest of my group any more than my Y chromosome did.
But, back to the point, I ran 13.4 miles that morning, so I was then sore all day long. I did some little things around the house, but I mostly just used the rest of the day to recover. So, odd reason for being unavailable #1: "I'm too sore from my morning exercise to come out to play."
Which brings us to reason number two. I spent a good chunk of my day today taking apart & putting back together my toilet. It had a bad wax seal, so I was tasked with replacing it. A toilet is a fairly simple contraption, but it's also an unwieldy contraption. An instruction like "empty out all of the water & turn it upside down" involved far more bending over, lifting, side-stepping, and annoyance than can be conveyed by that simple statement.
To keep this (relatively) short, I had to shut off the water, flush out as much of the water as possible, unscrew it from the ground, turn it upside to drain the remaining water, remove/clean the old wax seal, slap on the new seal, put in new screws, turn the toilet right side up & put it back, screw it back down, and then apply caulk to the base. All in all, I probably spent a good two to three hours doing that. The bright side, of course, is that it gave me odd reason for being unavailable #2: "I'm getting intimately acquainted with my toilet."
So, the next time you need an excuse to stay in, I humbly offer my weekend as material. Or you could just say you need to wash your hair. Your call, I suppose.
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