Weirdness

So tonight I'm running 6 miles with 2x800m all-out sprints, one of my favorite speed workouts. During the 2-mile warmup I run past this guy who's walking toward me. He's aboiut 6'3", reasonably tan, mid-30's, wearing white shorts, no shirt, toned upper body, and blond. And the way he's walking he's obviously proud of himself. As I continue on my way I think to myself, okay, weird. Hopefully he turns off into a neighborhood and I don't have to see him again. Wrong.

During my first 800m sprint I pass him at about the 650m mark. He's still walking, and seems to be out for nothing much more than for all the commuters to enjoy the display. Still weird. And we weren't done.

After 15 minutes of recovery and the second 800m sprint, I see him ahead as I'm getting close to finishing the 800m and just as I'm about to die from running under 6 minutes/mile. I slow down to recover and he just keeps walking, almost like a big blond robot. After this I was just thankful I didn't see him again. Almost felt like the dude was stalking me!

In other news, Alan called today and told me he's 99% sure he won't be able to make the half-marathon next weekend. That totally stinks, and I'm keeping that muted since this is a family blog. He told me to got set a PR, and I was doing computations in my head during today's run on how fast I'd have to run per mile in order to get there, and boy, it's going to be tough. As I was running today in the 6-minute/mile range I realized how tough it would be to keep that pace for more than 800m, and yeah, I'm not there yet - if ever. Sad for my buddy that he can't make it and we don't get to hang out for a few days. Guess we'll have to come up with Plan B. (evil laugh) And maybe that will involve a baseball outing. You never know.