Bouncing down the Avenues

One of the reasons I love running up 2nd Avenue.

Last night I laid in bed with an ice pack on my neck for about half an hour to make sure it would feel better today. Of course, that was after I'd gotten into bed after 11 and Pete started coughing so much that I knew neither of us would get much sleep if it didn't stop so I went to the store and got some cough medicine for him, along with some eggs and bananas. So it was after midnight by the time I got to bed, and I didn't even bother setting my alarm for 5:30 so I could get up and run. I figured I'd be able to find someone to watch Elle later.

It turned out that Pete decided to take a sick day so I was able to go do my run right after dropping the kids off at school which was perfect because it started raining right after I got home.

My neck was hurting a little bit when I started running, just when I'd look for cars or something, but after a mile or so, I completely forgot about it. It must have felt a lot better because I didn't even remember I had a sore neck until I got into the shower. That was nice not to have to worry about that on the run.

I ran up 2nd Avenue and I tried to enjoy every minute of my run. I finally had my ipod again after forgetting it last week, getting it wet because it was hanging on my fuel belt Saturday, and then the battery dying after 1 mile on Monday. Elle had been playing with it and turned it off shuffle so I got to listen to the songs in alphabetical order by artist. It's kind of fun to do this because I don't remember everything that's on there. It started off with Ben Kweller, then went Black Sabbath (Ironman), Cake, and David Bowie. I turned around during "Changes", then Die Prinzen came on with Ganz Oben. That's one of my favorite inspiring songs to run to. It's in German so I don't quite understand it all, but I think it basically says that you will make it to the top. Or something like that. Pete could probably correct me here. Anyways, that was fun to start my downhill to.

Then I started flipping through, which was hard because I like all the songs on my ipod, but there's a certain song by The Knife that's been played at our house almost every day since Pete discovered it a week or so ago. It's so awesome, and I put it on my ipod right away, but had yet to have it come one while I was running. Today was going to be the day.

I flipped through Elbow, and Foo Fighters, but couldn't go strait through without listening to a couple songs. I went past Fraz Ferdinand, and the next song that came on ("I Predict A Riot" - very fun to run to) I didn't know the name of the artist so I didn't know where I was. I was starting to worry that The Knife would be in the Ts instead of the Ks like I'd been planning on or that it never really got transferred onto my ipod at all so I kind of forgot about flipping through the songs.

Then, when I had one mile left, it suddenly came on! That gave me new strength, and I tried not to let myself fizzle down too much at the end even though it was the hardest part of the run like it has been lately. Here's the video of the song. It's kind of a strange video (and those kids on the skateboards are crazy! Where are their shoes?!), but turn your audio up because it's a rad song:

If that song sounds familiar to you, it's probably because you've seen this commercial with the cover by Jose Gonzolez which is a totally different and beautiful version of the song:

I kind of wanted to listen to this song while I was running down 2nd Avenue because of the commercial. It seemed fitting, but I was happy to have it on the flat too. I felt like I was going to throw up at the end, but it was a good run. I'm glad I got to do it! Here are my splits:

1. 9:39
2. 10:01
3. 10:35
4. 10:45
5. 9:06
6. 9:03
7. 9:40
8. 10:00

Total Distance: 8 Miles

Total Time: 1:18:54

Average Pace: 9:51 min/mile