Today’s Run
Time – 2:33:02
Distance – 15.0 miles
Pace – 10:10 min/mi
Elevation – 329 ft.
Long run day is here again. It was time for me to start adding more mileage, so the goal was 15 miles. I did an out-and-back down one of the trails in the area, into the cold wind to start, and then back through town and home. And it was COLD! A 15–20 MPH wind on a 45 degree day makes for not-so-comfortable temperatures. But, the mileage wasn’t too bad, and I was able to negative split the run with sub–10:00 pace for miles 10–14. This is what I need to keep doing for the next year until Tunnel Hill.
One of My Favorite Movies
One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was Forrest Gump. Yes, I know that it seems almost silly from a guy with a running blog, but there’s not actually a correlation there. I didn’t run as a kid, but I liked the story and the idea of a person passing through so much of history and being able to observe it.
That’s one of the best parts of this thing called life. While we get to interact with others, and enjoy the sights, sounds, and memories of everything, the observation of history is facinating to me.
I just finished an audiobook called The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan. It’s an economics-based book with geopolitical insights, observations, and predictions. Certainly, it’s not a book to read if your experiencing the post-holiday blues, but Zeihan has an interesting perspective on how the world came to be the way that it is today.
One of the statements that Zeihan makes over and over is that, because of the paths taken by most of the world since WWII, history has been “paused” for the last 70 years or so. The significant changes, geopolitical struggles, and rise and fall of regional powers has been slowed or stopped completely for a while now, but, and here’s the key sentence from the text:
History is about to restart.
That’s a deep, overwhelming statement when heard in the context of Zeihan’s other material. Considering that most of Europe was still under minor, or major, regional struggles, border changes, and government shifts from the time of the fall of the Roman Empire until about 1946, it’s been a quiet couple of decades. And that’s just Europe. The world is preparing to make things happen again.
This goes back to Forrest Gump’s travels through the latter half of the 20th century. So many times, we do a lot without realizing that we can observe the things that happen around us. The same things can happen when running. I saw during the long run the colors of the trees and the brightness of the sun through the blue sky. The wind was big and bold, pushing around the fallen leaves and making the air smell refreshing and brisk. People were hustling about on their Saturday rituals and errands, enjoying a November day.
The world is full of things to see, if you watch as it goes on around you. For me, whether it’s history restarting, the fall colors, or the anticipation of Baby Girl’s arrival in less than 4 weeks, it’s an exciting time to be alive.
I Will Run Today 