The Runs

In what was quite literally my first vacation in several years, I visited Xiamen last weekend, escaping the bitter cold, snog/smow, and general craziness of the Beijing for a couple days.  Xiamen, being a southern coastal city in the Fujian province, had fantastic air quality, warm weather, delicious seafood, and perfect conditions to run a marathon in January.  Or if you're a fat desk jockey like this Idiot, you'd run the half marathon but with slightly more preparation than the last one you did.

Honestly, it wasn't really hard to do more in preparation for this run.  My training for the Beijing half marathon in October was nil.  You might even say it was negative training if you consider the fact that a week before the run I was in the US, drinking lots of delicious beer and pigging out on multiple trips to Chipotle.  So with a handful of runs logged on a treadmill/torture device between October and January, my cup runneth over with confidence that I'd beat my previous time.  I did.  But then literally 15 minutes later, Peter Kamais finished his marathon.  The full one.  Of course, comparing myself to a professional marathoner is like comparing a sack of potatoes to a rocket ship.  The only thing that could propel a potato at a velocity even remotely close to that of a rocket ship would be my homemade PVC potato gun, but the police in northern Virginia have that in their possession now.  Fortunately, I have no aspirations to become a speedy marathoner.  Running is specifically categorized in my book as "Stuff-I-do-because-riding-bikes-in-Beijing-is-damn-near-impossible" or in the genus "No Big Deal"  That it might be fun or a challenge never really enters my mind.  Save for the beautiful scenery that Xiamen has, it was a rather boring and easy run.  Doing a run at the pace I did and for the amount that I trained can't be considered an accomplishment.  Its not like I was a contestant on the Biggest Loser or anything.  If I were to ever win a TV competition, the show would have to be named Averagest Boringer.  Being told my entire life that I could do great things if I "apply myself," I know when I'm being a slacker or when I've really got my head in the game.  Using a grade-school scale of achievement, my performance was far from astronaut-caliber, but I'm damn sure glad it gave me an excuse to get out of 'Jing for a minute.  It felt damn nice to breathe clean air and hear myself think for a minute.

Fighting through all these people at the start effs up your finishing time.