Melting SNOW

Summer makes me cranky.

I mean, summertime makes me happy, and tan, and I love fresh summer produce, and long days....

But it ALSO makes me cranky.

I'm not the only one who suffers from cranky-summer running.  I don't want to mention any names, but I have a friend to whom I address running e-mails with "Dear Cranky & Hot".  True story.

The friend is hot.

But then again, it's freaking AUGUST in VIRGINIA.

EVERYONE IS HOT.

Hot runners, hot under the collar, hot under the skirt... but that's getting off topic...

I've been out of the loop.  Off globe trotting, and miserable, and suffering through hot lonely runs.  But whew ~ I'm hearing stories from ALL DIRECTIONS.  Colors are FLYING, and tempers are flaring like unstable solar fields on the heliosphere.  I think I maybe just geeked out there for a minute...

I think though, that while the crankiness of summer running is a bit tricky to negotiate, I can get around some of the social ramifications by ...  running alone.

Ok.  That isn't going to happen.
I'm not going to become a hermit.
I talk WAY too much for that to ever occur.

Instead I think I will have better success if I simply try to remember an important detail.  Maybe, just maybe, I'm the one who is cranky.  Maybe it's NOT the people around me.  Perhaps they are simply mirroring my epic grump.

So when I interact with my friends, co-runners, people from other teams, Those People, the ones I will call ~ The Haters ~, the weirdo's who don't appreciate running in tall socks, and the non-runner in my life...  I will try to keep tabs on the idea that maybe, just maybe, it's not them.  It's me.

Of course, you know what that means, right?  It means I have to try EXTRA hard to show up with a good attitude, smile, embrace the moment and be in it even if I'm alone.  

I look forward to bringing that excellent smiling attitude to my return to MTT.  I look forward also to supported runs, SAGs with smiling faces, to MTT discussion boards, to hell repeats, to the Patrick Henry Half Marathon, to ... pish ~ no way am I running that... 3 half marathons in less than 30 days sounds like a punishment I don't deserve.

Of course, all that is assuming I ever make it back to VA.  So far in the last 7 days I've been about 3,780 miles... not including the 13.1 I ran on Sunday.  If things go to plan, I should see you in a week or so.

This weekend I'm sucking running another HOT rainy Half Marathon... the last one was in San Francisco, (which you can read a re-cap here), and this one is in Providence RI....  2 Half Marathons in 7 Days is proving to be a bigger test than I imagined.  My legs were still wasted when I got done with started my shake out run this morning.  So I did what any self respecting marathoner would do...

I jumped in my In-Laws pool fully clothed at 6am.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  It still seems like a good idea now, but then again, I'm a runner, and runners are weird.  

Respect The Distance.
Savor the run.