I have postponed intervals and hills the past couple of weeks and instead turned to increasing my overall weekly mileage. Wednesday I completed another six miles, enjoying an easy-paced ramble around Highlands on a cloudless day. I knew that the forecast for Thursday and Friday included heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Sally, and on Thursday it arrived on schedule, dropping at least five inches (the rain gauge was filled to the brim and may have overflowed) before tapering off that evening.
This morning it was still cloudy, temperatures in the lower 50s, and a light wind blowing - perfect conditions once again. I ran two miles by myself, then three with Karen, then another mile or so before I saw Fred coming toward me and finishing it out with him. It is always nice to run with these two running companions; Martha is so much faster than I am these days that she usually runs by herself.
Karen is a very committed Democrat and we end up talking about politics most of the time. As we were passing some familiar-looking yellow wildflowers at the top of Chestnut Street, she told me they were called "Bidens." I thought she might be pulling my leg, but when I returned home I checked and she was indeed correct. The common name around here is tickseed, but Bidens are actually a genus of the aster family, and this one is Bidens micrantha, which together with goldenrod and Joe Pye weed are common along our roads this time of year.
I am a Democrat myself these days and a big fan of both kinds of Bidens. But I have vowed to myself not to write about the upcoming election for the next six weeks so I will leave it at that.
I do not discuss politics with Fred; instead we discuss running, bears, church, and our abiding love of British crime mysteries in the form of movies, television series, and books. Over the years, Fred has told me about several series movies and books that I have read and enjoyed, and I in turn have told him about some that I think he might enjoy. How strange it might seem to the innocent dog-walker passing us on the road to hear us discussing murder! I hope he enjoys Agatha Raisin, the latest series I told him about, featuring a woman with a lovely Scottish accent (played by Ashley Jensen) who leaves her stressful job in London to settle in the quiet Cotswolds, where she (naturally) becomes involved in murder cases all around her. Who knew there was so much murder in those peaceful villages?
Time passes by swiftly when you're running with friends, talking about the upcoming election and murder in the Cotswolds, and before I knew it I had completed eight miles. I drove around a little bit to see if I could find Martha, and I found her on Wilson Road, just passing the little house where my Mom lived for several years. She was having a good run, too, on this beautiful day.
When I returned home, I entered my mileage for the week - 20 miles - in my running log. Flipping back through the pages, I discovered that, although I had completed several eight-mile runs this year, this was my highest mileage of the year. I remember not too many years ago when 20 miles would have been my lowest weekly mileage of the year, and when training for a marathon my weekly mileage would be 30 or even 40 miles. But that was then, and this is now, and we cannot measure ourselves against our performance in the past, a maxim especially true for runners. "The older I get, the faster I was!" I sometimes ruefully tell other runners. These days I am also discovering that the older I get, the farther I used to run.
Be happy with what you accomplish this day. And look forward to doing the best you can tomorrow.
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