Late night, great night

Good evening (said it like Count Chocula). It's 11:16 in the PM on Thursday night. I accidentally ate some gooey brownies (no, not that kind) and washed them down with coffee circa 10:00PM, so I'm wide awake now. This gives me some time to work on my blogging when my brain is in a different mode from my usual blog-time.

Before you read on, I want to warn you that if you are having a bad day or had a bad day yesterday, or just plain don't like to hear about other people having good days, you should abandon this blog and come back tomorrow, for today was a good day.

For some reason, it hadn't dawned on me until almost 6:00 tonight as I was pounding the pavement on Williams St that my spirits were through the roof. Due to some self-protective mechanism, I find that I've been on a very even keel mentally for the last year or so - no highs, no lows. It's a nice break from my previous bout with depression (I believe the rest of you called it 2004), but it affords me no highs, I just am.

Today was not like that, and it took running down the street in uncooperative shorts (but shorts in March nonetheless) for Jay-Z to point it out to me. Actually, it was Jadakiss who said "Gangstas don't die, they get chubby and move to Miami". I'm not sure why that made my day since I'm not a gangsta, I don't aspire to get chubby and I couldn't care less about Miami (I'm a Bills fan, eff the Dolphins). But at that point something clicked and I knew today was a good day.

Plus, let me tell you something else I don't think you'll care about. I had been reading on my running forum about how you're really supposed to run if you don't want to beat your knees to a pulp. It turns out that the old heel-to-toe technique is no good. You should be on the balls of your feet, moving at 180 steps/minute. So I tried that and OH MY ASS was it good. I'm sure my calves will be screaming at me tomorrow, but it worked great. Somehow I even shaved something like 6 minutes off my 10K time. That's unreal, I was down to 7.5 min mile as opposed to an 8.5 minute mile. Anyone who runs on the regular knows that taking a minute off your mile is HARD, and somehow I did it in one day. I give credit to this new technique and Mother Nature for her inspirational weather.

I'm not really a stickler for time when I run, usually it's more like I just want to finish up before it's time for dinner. I'm really more into running for the mental clearing aspect of it (plus I like to be able to eat dessert everyday and not worry about gaining weight). But today I strapped on the watch and kept tabs.

Well, I'll leave you all be now. I have a serious debt to Windows Solitaire that I think I'm going to try to win back now. As of last night, I owe my laptop $1995. Blast me and my addictions.

Over and out,
Old Coot