Andy's gone out to run. I'll leave in a few minutes. We start at different points, finish at different points, run different paces, but end up at the same place: Cosi's. That's where our buddies from the Reston Runners hang out after the Sunday morning run. This morning they'll all be talking about their long runs. Many of them are preparing for the DC Marathon in April so they're up to 20+ mile runs right now. Several of them are also preparing for Ironman races in the spring or early fall. They'll tell us how many hours they spent on the indoor bike and how two hours of biking earned them a handful of gummi candy.
It's a nervous bunch. I just keep my mouth shut until the topic changes to movies or Michael Jackson. These folks wouldn't care too much about my little six mile Sunday run, especially since I'm a slow runner compared to them. It's kind of like being labeled a slow learner. People are uncomfortable around you. You're a normal person, relatively speaking. It's just that you're a little "challenged" and people don't really understand it. It's been many years now that I've had to witness conversations that go like this.
"What's your pace?"
"I run really slow"
"How slow?"
"Well, I used to run a 6-minute mile, but now I'm running a 6.5 minute mile."
I've always thought that this conversation is similar to the 100 pound girl who complains at lunch that she can't eat too much because she'll get fat. Again, I suppose it's all relative.
During these conversations, I just sit very quietly and allow everyone to ignore me. By this point in my running career, nobody asks me about my pace. It guess it's just understood that I'm S-L-O-W.
So, we'll be at Cosi this morning and, at some point during the discussion, somebody will ask Andy when he's leaving for the AT. He'll remind them that he's planning to leave in April and then they'll make comments and jokes suggesting that he's crazy. This coming from people who feel bad when they only run 20 miles instead of 24. It's all relative, I suppose.
Well, it's almost time to leave. I've made the bed, cleaned the kitchen and saved Boo yet again from eating more rubberbands. You don't worry about what your cat's eating until you have to clean up your cat's regurgitation. Then you start questioning whether you should have been more strict about things like plastic and rubberbands. If I ever win the lottery, I'll dedicate major funding to the study of plastics and rubberbands NOT made with products that attract cats.
Anyway, I'm sitting here looking at the living room table. I'm not allowed to clean it. Andy has taken over the living room table as he sometimes does when he's obsessed with a project. For the past couple of months, he's been working on a stove for camping. At this point, I can't remember what the criteria are besides near weightlessness. I just see him cutting metal, then smell him burning things in the kitchen and then I hear some muttering which means basically that he must think up another way to achieve his stove goal. I've lost track of the goal.
There's a Sprite bottle and a small Evian bottle on the table. You'd think I could throw those away, right? Wrong. You never know what use there might be for a Sprite bottle and small Evian bottle. For all I know, Andy bought these bottles not for the liquids they contained, but for the bottles themselves. The bottles might be the perfect shape, size or weight for the stove experiment of the day. A couple of months ago Andy brought home tiny cat food cans. I wondered what the impetus was for introducing Boo to new cat food until I realized Andy was just waiting to empty the can so that he could cut it up and try burning things in it. Turns out it was a good weight.
Here's the living room table. I guess I'll miss this mess when he's gone, right? I'm off to run....
