Jogging in Slow Motion

I ran home from a meeting at church tonight.

There's something really powerful about running to or from someplace, rather than just running in a circle for exercise.

There's also something really powerful about running 5 miles in a row without stopping.

(Except for a brief walk up Hillary Step - have I mentioned that I live on the summit of Mount Everest? When it rains and floods I'm very glad of this. When I'm running or walking home I'm not so pleased.)

So I felt pretty good when I got home. Until Paul figured my per-mile pace for me. I've been running for 2 months now and I can run 5 miles with only a brief walk and that only because of a hill I can barely scale without climbing ropes and carabiners. I should be happy with this progress, right?

On the other hand, there's a minimum speed one can go and still be "running," no matter what one's gait looks like.

Seriously, after my first ever 5 miler I felt fine. I felt like I could have kept going (this in itself is probably evidence I should have been pushing the pace a little harder). I wasn't in pain. I won't go so far as to say that I was having fun, but I certainly wasn't miserable.

But I couldn't run a marathon. Because at some point race organizers force slow runners into the sag wagon, close the aide stations, and reopen the city streets to traffic. And I'm slow enough to worry about that.