Gorilla Run

I've been feeling a little bi-polar lately with regard to my running. Thursday night, I had a horrible run. I ran around my neighborhood after work, in the dark, in the cold, biting wind. The sidewalks are clear for a bit until you reach the snowpile at the end of the block. I did a lot of climbing back & forth over snowbanks going from the road to the sidewalks. I never really got into a groove, even when I did have some good clear stretches. Sylvia, the negative wench that lives in my head, was having a field day with this run. Sometimes when I'm on a run, I think about what I have to blog about, or what I'll have to say about this run to my coach. For Thursday night's run, the only thing I could come up that I wanted to share with the world or my coach was, "I HATE THIS AND I'M QUITTING RUNNING AND I'M CRAZY TO THINK I CAN DO A HALF IRONMAN AND EVEN SAYING THESE WORDS IS A WASTE OF YOUR TIME SO I WON'T EVEN BOTHER SHARING THEM ANYWAY." And yes, I do think in shouty run-on sentences. Actually, it's more like paragraphs, but no one needs to be subjected to that crap (including me; I'm working on that part...)

36 hours later, I'm showing up for our weekly group long run. I'm calm. I still have some lingering self-doubts but I'm doing a pretty good job of ignoring them. We run for 15 miles, and I feel good at the end. There is no temper tantrum, no pity party, no tears of defeat. It's just a good run.

Wow, being normal is just so boring.

Here is a photo from today's run, at about mile 10.

Heartbreak Hill Running Company sends their gorilla, Heartbreak Bill, out on the course so runners like us will take a photo with him (notice their store in the background), and then they post it on facebook, and then we "like" their company page so we can tag ourselves in the photo. It's a brilliant viral marketing scheme, since dozens of runners end up sharing these photos to hundreds of friends. 

Why is it a gorilla? It doesn't matter, but it's working for them.

Why did I have a good run today? That doesn't matter either, and I'm pretty sure it's working ok for me.