Free advice for people considering training for a half marathon: taking two weeks off running less than a month before your race is a SHITTY IDEA. Don’t do it! <\/p>\n
This morning was my first Sunday long run in three weeks after a long hiatus due to ankle injury \/ hideous illness \/ traveling to Asia, and I knew it was going to be bad. I didn’t sleep well last night because I was anxious about collapsing half way through, which didn’t help. <\/p>\n
Despite wanting to turn back after 6km, and sort of wanting to die at 10km, I finished the whole 18km in 2 hours, 4 minutes with an average pace of about 6:40 per kilometer. Kick. Ass.<\/p>\n
In massive, breaking news, I may have maybe possibly perhaps decided on a tattoo. <\/p>\n
At first I was debating getting little wings on my ankles, as per the Greek messenger God Hermes who wore Talaria – winged sandals made of imperishable gold. This could still be an option, but I’ll have to run a damn lot faster than I am now before I, ahem, earn my wings. I also like to give myself a lot of time to think about body art, because seriously it’s there for life and if I stop running in a few years because something new takes my fancy (as often happens with me – what can I say, I’m fickle) those wings will be an embarrassing reminder that I am no longer fleet of foot. <\/p>\n
That said, I think it’s okay to chronicle an event in your life with permanent ink, therefore if\/when I complete a marathon, I like the idea of memorializing it with the last words spoken by the legendary Pheidippides before he fell down dead: “Rejoice, we are victorious!” It’s a good sentiment, widely applicable to life generally, and obscure enough that not many people would know what it meant. I could also get it done in the original Greek, although translations into languages I don’t speak make me nervous. I’ve seen this phrase done as “\u00ce\u009d\u00ce\u00b5\u00ce\u00bd\u00ce\u00b9\u00ce\u00ba\u00ce\u00ae\u00ce\u00ba\u00ce\u00b1\u00ce\u00bc\u00ce\u00b5\u00ce\u00bd!”, “\u00cf\u2021\u00ce\u00b1\u00cf\u0081\u00ce\u00b5\u00ce\u00af\u00cf\u201e\u00ce\u00b5 \u00ce\u00b5\u00ce\u00bc\u00ce\u00b5\u00ce\u00af\u00cf\u201a \u00ce\u00b5\u00ce\u00af\u00ce\u00bd\u00ce\u00b1\u00ce\u00b9 \u00ce\u00bd\u00ce\u00b9\u00ce\u00ba\u00ce\u00b7\u00cf\u2020\u00ce\u00bf\u00cf\u0081\u00ce\u00bf~\u00cf\u0081\u00ce\u00bf\u00cf\u201a”, “Chairete nikomen!” and several other ways. Finding an authoritative translation is virtually impossible. Plus, where would I put it? Armband? Lower back? Sigh. This tattoo thing is complicated.<\/p>\n
That’s it for today, sports fans. Sorry that Facebook has dampened my ardor for LJ lately. I’ll get back into the swing of daily blogging again sooner or later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Free advice for people considering training for a half marathon: taking two weeks off running less than a month before your race is a SHITTY IDEA. Don’t do it! This morning was my first Sunday long run in three weeks after a long hiatus due to ankle injury \/ hideous illness \/ traveling to Asia, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consciousness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}