Marathon Journey Day 35: The Hang

Yesterday I drank about…9 drinks? And today I ran 10 miles.

This was pretty rough. As you can imagine.

I had to go to sleep drunk, get up, putter around long enough to drink some water, deflate a cooler shaped like Dracula in a coffin, you know, typical weekend morning stuff, then get to running.

Running hung over is good and bad. Good because afterward you feel mostly normal. Which is to say, shitty. Running 10 miles in the heat makes you feel shitty, but shitty in a way that you expect, and also having a little bit of a headache isn’t alarming or annoying because it was for, you know, health and shit.

It’s bad because everything is a little harder to tolerate when you’re hung. Going out to breakfast, the phone ringing. Your rope is shorter all around, so that’s not so hot.

But it’s good because I had to figure, hey, if I can get in 10 miles hung over as hell, when it’s hot as hell, if I can run in a situation that can be described as “hellish” in at least two ways, then that means I can probably handle 10 miles in most any circumstances, right?

In a way, I did myself a big favor. In my upcoming long runs, I’ll be looking at this one and saying, “Well, you did that shit. This isn’t as bad as that.”

Yes, let’s think about it that way. You did yourself a big favor, Pete. Congratulations. Hero. True hero.