Mission Creek at low tide

I can’t say with any cer­tain­ty that it was low tide when I ran past, but it sure smelled like low tide.

It’s a gor­geous day here in San Fran­cis­co. A bit on the breezy side but that’s not a prob­lem. Even at my lop­ing pace the body gen­er­ates enough heat that cool­ing air is refresh­ing, as a rule.

Today’s run alter­nat­ed between the feel­ing that I could keep going all day and the feel­ing that I had to stop right away. It’s a lit­tle strange how arbi­trary those feel­ings seem to be. The urge to stop does­n’t seem to have any cor­re­la­tion to my breath­ing, or my heartrate, or any sore­ness in my legs or feet. All those things would come and go as well, but the impulse to stop was not con­nect­ed to them.

In oth­er words, the impulse to quit has more to do with what I’m accus­tomed to than what I’m capa­ble of. I’m fight­ing men­tal iner­tia more than phys­i­cal iner­tia. That’s an impor­tant thing to remem­ber as I get out there.

One thing that helped me today was remem­ber­ing some­thing I’ve observed while on the motor­cy­cle. When I’m out rid­ing on a beau­ti­ful day, I imag­ine that I’m the envy of every­one else, that every­one would rather be rid­ing a motor­cy­cle than doing what­ev­er it is that they are doing. That fails under one con­di­tion: when I see run­ners. Some­times also when I see bicy­clists, but always if it’s a beau­ti­ful day and I see peo­ple run­ning, that’s when I feel envy even if I’m on the motorcycle.

So I know with­out a doubt that I have the pull to get me out on the road. I just have to actu­al­ly fol­low that pull, put the shoes on and go.