Conversation and Company

Date: 09/18/2011
Distance: 4.20 miles
Pace: 9:58/mile
Route: Hines Park 4 miler

Great Running Company: Rosiecat!

I have to admit, I was a little nervous before my run on Sunday with Rosiecat. It was the kind of nervous you get before doing something with someone who is obviously better at the activity then you. To be frank, you don’t want to embarrass yourself. See Rosiecat is a lean, mean running machine. She is not built like an NFL tight end, like say…myself. She is an incredibly modest person, but she ran cross country at the college we both attended, and while not the fastest on the team, no one politely asked her to leave either. Also, I would like to point out that she recently ran a half marathon in under two hours… I will just keep dreaming.

So apparently trying to be modest she suggested that we “only” do four miles. I am pretty sure she could have sprinted those four miles, but instead she settled for my modest pace and we had a great run peppered with great conversation. These are the best runs.

Sometimes running can get quite lonesome, especially distance running. That is why a lot of us runners are careening about your neighborhood wearing ear buds, it helps keep us sane. So it was nice to have company on a run, but it is also hard to carry on a conversation, because you are you know…running. In general conversation takes minutes, not seconds. It generally goes something like this:

Person 1: So...run run…how are the…run run….kids?

Person 2: great…run run…..we went to the….run run…beach over the…run run… weekend

Person 1: Yeah it was….run run…great weather….run run … for the beach.

Person 2: Man, that hill sucked…run run

The real problem is when you get to a rather long sentence with words like antidisestablishmentarianism in it (ok that never happens but you get the idea.)

This has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is you rarely ever blurt something stupid out; you just have too much time to think about what to say. Usually conversation wanders in and out of topics, with running holding a decent amount of the total, especially reflecting/complainnig about the run or a previous run or a quad injury or something.  I am convinced that Olympic sprinters complain to each other in the 100m dash about the track being uneven.

Thanks so much to Rosiecat for not embarrassing me, and politely jogging along at a warm up pace for 4 miles, not to mention the great conversation. Do you out there enjoy the solitary run, or you all about moving in roving packs of crazed runners jabbering to one another?

--JD