3 hour run

I ran longer than three hours (well, just a minute longer) for the first time this morning. My right foot hurts a bit, otherwise I feel good, even sitting in a cramped seat on a crowded airplane heading to Anchorage, surrounded by the smell of cheeseburgers and those who eat them.

Another first: I chose not to listen to music on my long run, although I did stick my iPod Shuffle and earphones into a pocket, just in case I got bored. Instead of zoning out to music, I was more aware of the rustle of leaves, the crash of waves, passing cyclists shouting to each other, the rasp of my breath, inducing a different trance state, with a synesthetic dimension – an undiluted appreciation of the pastel pink dawn over pale blue mountains half-hidden by a pearly layer of sea-level fog, a rust red container vessel, bright as blood in the early morning sun, the surreal yellow of a fire engine blocking the familiar path by Dallas Road, followed by the acrid shock of smoke floating up from the beach below.

This morning I ran (and walked – one minute for every nine or ten running) my usual route, which I am extending in 15 minute increments. I started at 5 am at the top of the gentle hill on Southgate street, a block and a half from where I live, slowly along the wood chip trail shaded by stately chestnut trees on Heywood Avenue, along the eastern border of Beacon Hill Park, past the peacocks screeching harshly in the petting zoo, across the street from the retirement homes on Douglas Street by mile zero, then looping east along Dallas Road through the no-leash zone beloved of dog owners, walkers, joggers and kitesurfers, around Clover Point where staid Victoria releases its raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca in pouting defiance of propriety and municipal toilet training, down the long slope to historic Ross Bay cemetery, in the cemetery itself along a narrow path between gravestones and tree stumps (which are conspiring these days to trip me up), across the street to Hollywood Crescent, up and down the killer hills of King George Terrace, past the Victoria golf course, the mansions and marinas of Oak Bay, and the lane by Willows Beach and Cattle Point, reminiscent of some genteel English seaside resort, replete with tea house and deck chairs, then looping back all the way again to James Bay and Beacon Hill with its landmark maple leaf flag fluttering proudly for all to see.

A few hours later, I told a colleague in passing I'd run three hours that morning, and she nearly fell off her chair. "What, are you training for a marathon?" she asked, incredulous, and I replied, "yes, actually I am."