Can’t You See I’m Running

Thank you to those of you who reminded me in yesterday’s comments that 9 days is an eternity for a runner to not be running. I did finally go out and run last night. Sometimes it’s just good to give your body a rest and take some extended time off. Oh, who am I kidding sometimes it’s just good to be a lazy bum and do nothing. I loved it!

Last night as I was out running I noticed an old lady walking way up ahead of me on the trail. She was wearing a purple shirt and a purple hat and was yapping at everyone that passed within earshot of her. I could see it coming. For those of you who are not into sports the Colorado Rockies (purple) are currently playing the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. Last night was Game 1 which saw the Red Sox beat the Rockies like a red-headed step-child, but this didn’t occur until after my run.

As she heard me approaching from behind she yelled over her shoulder “what a beautiful evening!” Now I don’t mind saying “hi” to a fellow runner and I’ll even offer a “good evening” to someone who greets me, but I’m trying to run here. I’m usually far too out of breath or too tired to chit-chat, so I try to halt this burgeoning conversation with a short answer.
“Yup.” It doesn’t work.
“Beautiful night for our Rockies to win their first World Series” she says as I’m now right beside her. Now I’m a little annoyed. First of all the game was at Fenway in Boston so it really doesn’t matter that we were having beautiful weather in Colorado. Second of all it’s a best-of-seven format so neither team will be winning the World Series tonight and finally, they’re not OUR Rockies because I’m a lifelong Red Sox fan. I realize that she could have meant that it was a beautiful night to be watching the Rockies on TV and she could have meant ‘win their first World Series game,’ but like I said I was already annoyed that she was trying to strike up a conversation with me while I was running. Despite all this I restrained myself from yelling “go Sox” because I know that Boston fans have a reputation for being obnoxious, know-it-alls, who think they’re better than everyone else and I certainly don’t want to feed into that stereotype. I gave the lady a thumbs-up and hoped that she’d take my non-verbal hint that I was done with this conversation. No such luck.
“I think they’re going to win! Don’t you think they’ll win?” she asked, as I was now well ahead of her.
I turned around, jogging backwards I said to her “I just hope that Beckett pitches well tonight!” she smiled, nodded her head and gave me a clueless thumbs-up. Again for those of you who don’t follow baseball Josh Beckett was the Game 1 starting pitcher for the Red Sox.

The rest of the run was pretty uneventful. I was running without my MP3 player, I didn’t have a specific time goal in mind and it was kind of liberating. I was just running. It feels good to be back.

Editor’s Note: I promise not to turn this into a sports blog during the World Series, but this was too good a story to pass up.