Nurse on the Run

Runners are big on their routines.  We don’t like to eat different foods before running.  We must retie our shoes three times before a race.  Even our daily runs have a bit of a routine to them.  I start my routine by checking the weather twelve times to figure out what to wear, dig through my obscene amount of running clothes to pick what I want to wear (or just pick from my already worn, probably smelly, pile).  Then, I head outside and turn on my Garmin, either laying it on the sidewalk or on a car to wait for it to get signal.

While waiting for signal, sometimes I stretch.  Other times I just stand there looking annoyed until it gets signal.  That’s what I did today.  It was actually a nice January day…in the 40’s, a bit gray.  Looked like it maybe had sprinkled a bit, but not currently raining.  I wore shorts and a long sleeve shirt, so I was a bit chilly waiting to get signal, but knew I’d be fine once I started running.

A man walked by and pointed to my watch on the ground as if to say, “Hey, your watch is on the ground.”  …yes, I know.  Then another man came up to me and told me that my watch was on the ground.  Yes, yes, I know, I’m waiting for it to be ready.  He gave me a quizzical look and I explained that it had satellites to tell me how far I run.

Continue blank stare.  To me and most of my runner friends, a Garmin is fairly familiar device, and it seems totally normal to be running with a small computer on my wrist.  Apparently this is not the case for the rest of the world.  He kept talking to me (and I kept eying my watch to wait for it to get signal…), and I explained again that the watch had GPS and tells me how far I run.

Well, he got hooked on the GPS part of the statement and seemed to think I was lost.  To which he said, “You don’t know where you are?  You are lost?  You are safe with me.  You are very beautiful.  Do you know Hungarian?”  “Ummm….no.”  “What language do you know?”  “Uhhh…English.”  “You are safe with me.”

Then I saw my watch had signal, picked it up, told him I was going to be on my way, and bolted for fear that said Hungarian man would somehow take me to a “safe” place.

Awkward?  Creepy?  I have no idea.

I ended up going on a ten mile run over along the West Side Highway.  It was fantastic running weather, and despite telling myself to try to go slow (fail fail fail), I ended up with a solid pace that actually felt quite nice.  Ten miles feeling easy?  I think I’m back.

Friday, January 11
10.26 miles in 1:18:13, avg pace of 7:37

And yes, the Hungarian man was still outside when I came back home so I quickly headed up to my safe apartment, sans Hungarian man.