My Running Log

I realised that my mind is at its best when I am out for a run. Reading through my thoughts during a typical 30 min run can be an intellectually stimulating experience if you can handle all the heavy stuff. Here's an example:

0-5 mins: I hate this stretching module. I also hate cars because they can get started without needing to warm up. That's probably because cars feed on petrol and I eat some random vegetables, chicken and bread. But I can't feed on petrol. I don't think anyone can. If we fed on petrol we'd have to eat our food raw because obviously , you can't cook petrol . The damn thing would catch fire.

10-15 mins: There it is, lying across the road with white stripes painted on its body. Speed breakers always look like they're trying to camouflage themselves the way they do it in the army, painting their faces with those black stripes and all. Only that these speed breakers end up being all the more conspicuous. The problem is that while you climb over them, you always end up making one leg do more work than the other. That's not a good thing. You see, legs are like siblings, if you make one work more than the other for something that benefits both of them equally , it is bound to piss the overworked one . That's not something you'd really want because it's not like you have a substitute leg in place and every time one of the legs at work throws a tantrum, you can put its substitute in use. I guess a substitute leg is another one of those things that Master card can't buy .

15-20 mins: He's funny, that dog there...just ambling along the highway, the morning cold air in his hair and joy on his face. I always wonder if dogs ever go anywhere, like traveling to another part of the city or to another town perhaps? I guess not. Because although they have 4 legs which is better than having just two , going long distances would be quite a challenge and they don't even have their own transport system . I think , they might just be chasing cars to get a lift or something and we misconstrue them to be chasing us. I suddenly feel glad that I am not a dog. It would be horrible trying to get a lift all your life and without ever getting one.

15-20 mins: I see this guy running almost every other day. Actually, it would be unfair to qualify his act of moving forward as running. It is a lot of active motion of hands with his head bobbling while his body moves forward, one hundredth of a meter at a time. I sometimes feel that I should tell him that he isn't getting anywhere at that speed but I always hold back because it's not really my business. May be, he grew up on a treadmill where the acts of running and moving forward don't share a causal relationship.

20-25 mins: I quite like that bull sitting on the kerb. It was there yesterday too. Sitting in careless abandon, masticating what it ate last evening. He must feel proud to have even his excreta mean something important to us humans. It's funny, this whole bullshit thing, we use the phrase to define something absolutely useless while the phrase is an irreplaceable part of our vocabularies . Bullshit, my last boss did a lot of that.

25-30 mins: It would've been great if you could just keep running and not feel the pain. I don't mean that there shouldn't be any pain. I am merely saying that it would be great if you had the option of feeling all the pain right in the end , after all the running is over. It would be fun that way. You could just run all you want and then drug yourself to sleep before the pain hit. You would need to be careful with the dose of the drug though. Too much of it could make you act really funny. I should have fed my ex-boss a heavy dose of it.

The last few steps: Almost there. I must have shed a lot of weight because my shorts are kind of sliding down. Must hold them up. The last thing I want is to have no shorts to run in tomorrow. Phew.

Image source : istock photo