Stopping By The Woods

Today I completed a 13 mile run, in keeping with my training plan for the 2008 Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon. It was the longest I have run since April 28, 2001 (last time I ran the mini). I am pleased that I made it through the run, but I now know that my goal of completing the mini in under 2 hours is probably not achievable. I thought I ran fairly strong, and I took a one minute walk break every 9 minutes, carried water with me and hydrated correctly, ate a bowl of Kashi hot cereal beforehand for energy, etc. But I must have bonked somewhere around mile 10. All I know is that by the time I had gone around 11.6 miles, it seemed like I was running in slow motion, maybe because I was! The last two miles seemed killer to me.

I kind of felt this coming, psychologically. I have not been losing weight like I was, in fact, I have even gained a couple of pounds in the past couple weeks [lousy diet lately], and I have been having the winter/gray skies/all work and no play blues. So building up to this day, I just felt a little anxiety. I woke up around 4 in the morning last night feeling like I needed to have some new music on my iPod to just get me through the run. I downloaded about 10 songs, most of them old funk/R&B classics. I have a huge weakness for early 70s stuff, especially soul funk. Then I created a playlist on my iPod called “Get me thru” and loaded the new songs into it, without listening to any of them because I wanted sort of a “surprise” factor, and mixed in some stuff I already had, enough to last 2.5 hours. All I can say is thank god I did. I really don’t think I could have done this run if it weren’t for the music. And I know for a fact I would have just walked the last uphill half-mile if not for King Floyd’s “Groove Me.” What an awesome, awesome song! From the moment it starts out with a grunt, all the way to the very end, just absolute beauty.

And so, I title this post in honor of that song. King Floyd died a couple years ago but I owe him big time. For those of you interested in the song or maybe want to listen to it, click on this link to a page on the NPR website about it, and about Mr. Floyd. You can then click on another link to listen to the full song, in all its funky splendor. Maybe you will see what I mean, how it carried me up the hill and through the last half mile, and why I love it so.

Obligatory numbers (Yeah, I know. Slow.):