The weather’s been unseasonably cool here lately (what Global Warming? Oh wait…Climate Change. That’s right). When the whistle blew and it was time to lace up my Ariels and do some running, it was 88 degrees. No, not 188 degrees. 88 DEGREES! I don’t know what’s up with the weather patterns here in Farrahzona, but I’m digging the below normal temps.

I talked Running Buddy into going outside and enjoying the rare opportunity to run after work, outside, in June. We ran the canals near the office. It was…different. I’m used to running on treadmills in the evenings. The dirt/gravel combo and the hills made it an challenging run. Of course, I’m 40lbs overweight (gained 5lbs last week! what?) trying to run a marathon. It’s always a challenge. I stuck with my plan of running until I couldn’t catch my breath, and stopped often. I was actually a little embarrassed to have Running Buddy see me this way. She’s a runner. She did 6 miles on Saturday. I was hurting trying to complete 1.25 before we turned around and headed back to the cars.

I enjoyed it a great deal. The birds and the bunnies and the fish in the canals made it cool. It certainly beat reading the closed captioning of a wall-mounted TV. I was energized when I was done too. I was able to sit down and remove my tennies when I got home, and didn’t get sucked into the couch. I’m going to run like that whenever I can.

And so here we are. It’s Wednesday afternoon and it’s a running day. Running Buddy is otherwise engaged this afternoon, so running is on my own. I’m sitting in my office looking at the piles of work I have in front of me. I’m thinking about everything else I’d rather be doing tonight, everything else I HAVE to do tonight and I don’t want to run. Running hasn’t made it on to my HAVE To Do list yet. I know it should, but it hasn’t.

But it’s gorgeous outside my office window. The sun is shining, the clouds are sparking in the sky. The Weather Channel says it’s only 90 degrees outside. 90 on a June afternoon! Sweatshirt weather, really.

But I haven’t seen The Hoff in a week and she wants to come over tonight and hang out. We must talk of many things - of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings. The Hoff wants to drink wine and eat yummy appetizers. I want.

But I have this goal - a goal of running a marathon and raising money to cure evil blood cancers. Last Saturday showed me how much it sucks when you don’t follow the training schedule and this Saturday is 4 miles. It will be worse for me than it was last week.

My will is being tested. How bad do I want this?

I’ll find out in less than half an hour.