running?
(random interrelated bits)
So I got the sallie mae packet in the mail yesterday, and dealt with it/sent the important bits back today. It feels pretty good to have dealt with that. I don’t like the interest rate that I consolidated to — if I had taken care of it a year ago instead of this week, I’d have had a 2% lower interest rate. *shrug* what can ya do? That’s the price of procrastination, for ya.
Last night I had a dream that I was running through a mall at a moderate clip — pretty decent for a person on foot, not so great for an olympic athelete or someone on a bike, and it got me thinking a bit…
The thing that always annoys me about walking is that it takes for-freaking-ever to get anywhere. I mean like, it’s such a short trip to work, it’s totally negligible in the grand scheme of things. I live about 1000 (plus or minus 200) feet from work. At 3 miles an hour (a relaxed pace, about my norm I’d guess), and including time on the elevator and time trying to cross the usually fairly busy state street, it’s about 6 minutes to get to work. Of that, about 4 minutes is devoted to the walk.
Now, 4 minutes isn’t all that much time. 6 isn’t either. Just enough to annoy me. And I realized, running at a comfortable running pace is like 4 times faster than walking at a comfortable walking pace. The dream really highlighted that… if I could run without it being a big effort, then I could slash that sense of distance dramatically.
So I tried running this morning. Just starting at something sane. I ran down to the end of the block to drop my mail in the mailbox, and then ran back. And you know, it worked out pretty well. I ran down to the box, and was just getting a little tired. Took a couple seconds to stretch, and ran back. I dunno how long that is, probably only about 300 feet each way, but thinking about it, that’s about the halfway point to work.
I liked it. It was about the right distance … another hundred feet would have been too much, another 100 feet closer wouldn’t have been enough. I know that saying “500-600 feet is the right distance for me to run” is kinda a sad reflection on my current physique, but … what can ya do?