Running update: The village idiot goes 10 miles this weekend.

I've been all talk of vegetables, food and the garden lately and I'm here to rectify that. At least as far as running is concerned.

Because, despite all this pie celebrating and radish demolishing and tomato canning and artichoke cookery - I have been running.

Mostly.

I mean, I did my last shortish-long run last weekend, to the tune of a smooth nine miles and I've located the Camelbak for this Saturday's re-entry into double-digit territory.

Thankfully, it appears the most recent heatwave (dudes, we've been in the 90s) has subsided, and it should be a cool upper 50s for my pre-dawn long run this weekend.

And, yes, now I consider my long runs to actually be Long and not Shortish Long as I've been calling them. Because, to me, they're not long until they require the wearing of the Camelbak and the refueling with Luna Moons at the 60 minute mark. And, for whatever reason, I hold off on these two features until I hit 10 miles.

Why?

Well, who the fuck knows.

I mean, really, it'd be great to have some water to sip on during any amount of mileage. I'd have really loved it even during the last few shortish long runs because, when you think about it, nine miles is just 10 minutes shorter than 10 miles (Hi. I'm slow. Still.) and a gal gets thirsty out there after an hour of dodging traffic and MUTHEREFFERS WHO SPRINKLE THE STREETS AND SIDEWALKS whatever.

But no. I save the refreshments for 10+ mile officially long Long runs because I like to create random restrictions and rules in my life. It's what I do to entertain myself when I'm out there singing along to bad words and trying not to get flattened by distracted parents manning enormous mini vans.

Sidenote: Parents - if you must play DVDs in the headrests of your car for your ill-behaved children, please don't try to watch the video with them. K? Thankssomuch!

Assholes.

I guess the deal with the Camelbak and moons is that it just makes the run seem so much more serious. And it's hard to be all nonchalant and This is going to be enjoyable when you're filling up your serious Camelbak with water before dawn on a Saturday morning. And I like to feel easy going and nonchalant when I go out for a run of any distance because then it seems like I'm about to do something fun rather than something OH MY GOD IT MIGHT KILL ME.

Because, I'll be honest, some of these runs after 10 miles seem a little, how you say, stifling.

Like I'm out on some epic journey from which I will only return after much torture and sweating have been endured.

And that's no way to get out of bed on a Saturday - with something so Lawrence of Arabia hanging out there.

Perhaps that's what kept me from my regularly scheduled and rarely missed speedworkish run of yesterday morning.

I woke up, felt immediately not great and then decided that I'd earned a morning off from running. I mean, I *could* have hopped up and gone about my life as normal, but I didn't. I called up a semi-recent event in which I learned an important lesson about listening to one's keener instincts and decided that if my body and mind weren't syncing this morning, that I wasn't going to push it.

And I didn't. Instead, I went out the garden in my underpants and picked tomatoes.

Because, as you know, my life makes a shitload of sense and I spend a lot of it entertaining our neighbors and convincing them to keep their blinds drawn.

Perhaps my body/mind/soul felt more like being the village idiot than the neighborhood runner. Which is fine. I can do both. I'm versatile like that.

But tomorrow, I'll go out and do my speedworkish run and think about the comment I read recently, somewhere I've now forgotten, that said something to the tune of, "If you don't train to run fast, you won't run fast."

This comment is one of those that as soon as I heard it, I knew it was going to rattle around in my pea brain until I took it seriously. And here I am, something like a week or so later, with it starting to rattle. And with this rattling comes the sincere understanding that I'm not training to run fast even though I'm doing these speedworkish runs.

Because I know, if I want to run faster, and I *think* I do, I need to train to run faster. I just have to come to grips with how that running faster business will impact my life and how much math is realistically involved.

Good thing I'm going on vacation in a few weeks and can promptly forget about it! Yay for vacation cocktail hour at 2pm! Yay for taking a break from training five weeks before a half marathon!

See - told you my life made a shitload of sense.