Monday, September 12, 2011

Best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley

Throughout this weekend, I kept on thinking of Burns's poem, "To a Mouse." The title of the blogpost is taken from his poem. "Gang aft agley" apparently means "Go often askew." Well, this weekend, school and finicky garmin are messing with my best laid running plan.
Look at Remy's schemes going awry. This is what came up on bing image search when I looked for mouse.
If you didn't know, he's the main character of Pixar's Ratatouille.  

I wanted to get in a long run of 8 miles this weekend in an effort to build back up to a half marathon distance. So, like a good runner, I went to bed fairly early (1AM ish) instead of going out with rest of the collegetown crew. I even woke up bright and early at 8:45AM, which is pretty early for me during the weekend during academic semester. Unforunately, my garmin just refused to catch the signal. After running with a garmin for two years, I couldn't imagine going blind for a long run. So, I just decided that it wasn't meant to be.

And like a good college student, I went off to the library thinking I'll just get my run during late afternoon and do my work in the morning. Unfortunately, the garmin refused to catch the signal again leading me to head to bed early despite a plethora of other fun things going on. Ah, the things I do for running.

When garmin refused to catch again on Sunday, I just decided to run without it. It also gave me a chance to reflect back on 9/11 and remember all the men and women who are working hard for my country.   And the garmin caught at mile 3 thankfully. I ended up getting in 8.3 miles at what felt like a reasonable pace. One good thing was that I ran a hillier course than I usually do. One notable thing that happened, was that I probably scared everyone who saw me running. In addition to the grimace I apparently also had a huge streak of blood right in the middle of the thigh that I only noticed when the bfriend pointed it out. Don't worry! It was nothing. It was literally a small mosquito bite that had scabbed over that I apparently de-scabbed while running. Who knew a small thing like that could bleed so much. I blame it on my heart vigorously pumping blood to my legs to keep it going. If you were scared by me Sunday morning, sorry!

However now, due to all the things coming up this week like the career fair, project presentation, and other assignments, it looks like I'm going to have to cut out easy milege, and I may not even get in tempo and intervals. It also doesn't help that I live in central New York where weather is fickle.

I admire everyone who balances work and school with running and whatever other passions. Because I hear that life only gets harder after college.

Sorry for the boring post, as you can see, all I've been doing is some running, some work, and majority procrastinating.
 Happy Monday everyone!  How do you guys keep the balance?



3 comments:

  1. You might want to invest in a new garmin? You have had it for two years and gotten good use out of it.

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  2. I hate when my Garmin does that!! It usually happens to me when I've just traveled a few hours away. It's been pretty good lately, but I've definitely had to forego some runs because of it.

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  3. I love that you mentioned Ratatoiulle. However you spell that!

    And I should have asked you today how the running is going!

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