water running
I had a great run this morning. Although I was presenting a paper at 10 a.m. at a conference that just happened to be local, I met my running partner for a seven miler at seven a.m. The weather was breezy and humid, with intermittent rain, but once we started running, the rain felt great. A big group of serious-looking early bird runners were just coming in at seven as we were starting. No IT band pain the whole way, and Susan and I just talked and caught up with what has been going on in both our lives over the past few weeks.
Yesterday the weather was so beautiful here I decided to go to the swimming pool at the college where I teach. The pool is outside and on a lake, one of the features that makes the college look like a country club. There are almost always students lying out there, but apparently faculty and staff only show up for serious lap swims early in the morning and late afternoon. Because for my whole life I've always looked younger than I am (which is only just now, at age thirty, starting to become a good thing, although it hasn't been in the past, when I've wanted people to take me seriously), I put on shades and a bikini, grabbed a lawn chair, and went incognito at the pool. I saw none of my students there, so I think I pulled it off.
I tried water running (I think)... would that be like treading water? I can't touch the ground anywhere in the pool. Drama occurred when someone spotted an alligator outside the fenced-in pool, down by the lake. I also eavesdropped on some interesting student conversations ("All my father cares about is making money. Forget the family; he'd rather have the nice house and the Jaguar. That's all men care about is money."). Most interesting was a group of students who were playing April Fools' jokes on their parents by calling them on speakerphone and announcing that the student had been arrested for possession of marijuana. Not a joke I would want to hear if I were a parent. I overheard several complete meltdowns by parents (and one eighty year old grandmother, who threatened to have a heart attack), which the girls playing the joke seemed to find endlessly amusing.
I am looking forward to summer, when the pool will be mine, all mine!
posted by Rachel @ 4:53 PM
4 Comments:
Hey, glad to hear that ITB was behaving for your run. Definately good news. And if I had a paper to give, there's no way I could run that morning because I'd be splat on the sofa at home at the time I was supposed to talk! :D
And none of *my* professors ever wore a bikini in college. Ofcourse, they were mostly men over 50 and so that would be really distressing to see. :D
So I couldn't tell - did you like the water running enough to do it again? Or is 10 miles and no IT pain sufficient to stick with the road? Glad to hear you were injury free!
That was hilarious about the college students at the pool. I am so glad that I am not that age anymore! hmmm. I'd like to look like I was, though. Lucky you!
Ah, the folly and fantasy of the pool at R. Colly. I can remember when, except when I went there there was no pool. They built it the year after I left. We jumped off high platforms on a dock built out into the lake. That gator's been there for decades!
Oh the running sounds good again. Don't go crazy. Start adding a mile every other run (that's what works for me anyway).
Your story reminds me of all the times I drive the teenagers from my school to various games and events. They forget I am in the car, and do I hear the stories. It's definitely Too Much Information!
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