In spite of my oodles of posted optimism lately, April has thus far been a month of deep, sometimes dark reflection for MLC Man. This has been principally because it has been one year since my father died, and on Easter Monday we fulfilled his wish to have his ashes scattered at sea. Unless you have a sea-going vessel within the family (we don't), you might appreciate that this is actually a tricky (and not inexpensive) request to fulfill. But we did the deed, and as a close friend suggested to me, this ceremony was actually significantly more meaningful than the funeral service, at least to us immediate family.
Well anyway, that's what started the deep introspection, and then Andy's post on bacon sandwiches had a further impact. Having done a little calculus at university, I worked on the given formula and did some experimentation this afternoon in my laboratory. That is to say, kitchen.
I should add that Sweder is also to blame here. His dire warnings on injury prevention forced me to have a heart-to-heart conversation with my knees this morning, shortly after breakfast. I had an 8km scheduled today, and I needed to know whether - given the lack of an immediate race goal - this was wise, in the face of continued, albeit moderate, dull aches in said knees.
It has to be said, with not a little regret, that my patellas are giving me the silent treatment, and so, like George Dubya, I was forced to make my own conclusions about the apparently aggressive intent of the patellas in question. Now it's a fine line between prudence and paranoia, and I concluded (unlike Dubya) that paranoia was not called for, but perhaps prudence would be...well, prudent. And so I called into effect a truce, put away my running shorts for the day... and went shopping.
And so you can perhaps understand why I had such RC matters as bacon sandwiches much in mind as I perused the deli section of the local supermarket. And there I spied a rather excellent looking selection of rindless shortcut bacon that would, and indeed
did make an ideal lab subject.
Now I shan't bore you with insane gobs of mathematics. But I think in the greater interests of humanity (excepting Jews, Muslims, vegetarians etc.) I should add a few riders (well I'll restrict myself to three) to the formula proferred by Andy:
1) The selection and preparation of the bread is of considerably greater importance than first appears.
2) The choice of hydrating catalyst (beer, tea, wine, coffee etc.) is similarly very important, and will vary widely depending on time of day, day of week, social occasion etc.
3) The consideration of whether the sandwich is to be consumed prior to, after, or
instead of a scheduled training run must be factored into the enjoyment quotient.
This last point caused further deep-seated and somewhat dark musings within the MLC Man mind. Having eschewed my scheduled run, I found myself instead shovelling a sizeable pork belly surrounded by a hill-sized slab of bread into my mouth. Was this a good idea I had to ask?
To find the answer, I returned to Andy's RC splash page. Sure enough, there was the answer! I rushed into my mp3 collection, played "
Wonderful Land" and suddenly felt much better.
I guess life is subjective and esoteric and simply won't allow itself to be reduced to a training schedule or a formula. That's cool. I'll do my run tomorrow and all will be fine.
And yes, the bacon sandwich
was a bloody good idea. Tomorrow, I might undertake a quest for the perfect BLT*. After my run, though. Life's pretty bloody good, really.
And my knees feel better now too.
*[SIZE="1"]Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich for those of other cultures. [/SIZE]
Audacious April.
