Six Hundred Forty-Seven

June 4, 2017
7.50 Miles in 1:17:38
Mood: Feisty without reason, but at least there were pretty pelicans.
Soundtrack: Neil Young "Rust Never Sleep" and "After the Gold Rush" and "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere"

Pounded out three 1970's era Neil Young albums on this run, and while they are far from what you'd use to get yourself pumped up, they made surprisingly decent running music. Plus, I have to hand it to the man, he was very good at naming albums in the seventies. Look at those album titles! So solid.

As I was listening to Neil and taking photos of Pelicans, I also found myself feeling a bit feisty and competitive. At one point, after stopping to select a new Neil Young album, a woman in what I would guess to be her mid-thirties ran past me. She was going very slowly, but I was standing still at that moment, so she flew on by. I picked "After the Gold Rush" and then began running and quickly caught up to her and passed her. I thought this would turn out to be something of no consequence, but I was wrong. About forty-five seconds later she came flying past me, pace severely increased as if there was malice in it. For some reason, this got me going and it was ON. I revved up my speed to keep pace, and for the next mile I kept trying to pass her and she kept trying to make it as difficult as possible for me to do so.

After far too long in this epic struggle, I decided to just sprint past her. I had been going much faster than my regular speed for about a mile, and I was getting tired, but I was going to get past her. I might fall down in exhaustion immediately afterwards, but I was going to win a contest that was completely meaningless. I went up to my full speed and blew past her, and went about another two tenths of a mile before I realized that I could not sustain this pace and it was foolish to have tried. I took a side path that led to the middle of the park, ran until I was safely hidden between a large grove of trees, and then stopped and heaved oxygen into my lungs as quickly as I could in a desperate attempt to catch my breath. After about five minutes of rest, I continued on at a much more maintainable pace, laughing at myself at how I can be unreasonably competitive with no real good reason.