davidgagne.net

I just finished a 5.01 mi run with a pace of 10'12"/mi with Nike+ Running. http://t.co/SnzSXQbG #nikeplus

— David Vincent Gagne (@davidgagne) October 25, 2012

I did the P90X Plyometrics routine last night a little after nine o’clock, after I got my little boy into bed. (Take a minute to read an excellent review of this hellish torture.) That is more than more than enough of an excuse for my deplorable pace on this morning’s run.

On top of that, for the first time in my life my running was seriously affected by the weather. Not rain or sleet or snow or blistering heat; I’ve run in all those with no problem. No, I’m talking about the Santa Ana winds, which were flat-out howling around me the entire time. And they were painfully inconsistent, too. It’s not like half my run they were in my face and the other half they were at my back. They seemed to just be buffeting me from every direction. (I’ll admit it was pretty cool, though.)

Oh, and right at about the 3.6 mi mark I tripped on a chunk of sidewalk. I would kill to have seen what that looked like, because miraculously I managed to not fall. It felt like I actually flew through the air, my arms pinwheeling like Fred Flintstone and legs tumbling like Wile E. Coyote, with my head coming within a foot of smashing my face into the pavement but somehow then getting socked by my right knee back in some gyroscopic fashion to my normal upright position. It was an amazing few hundredths of a second, I think. My headphones separated from my iPhone, and I feel like I pulled every muscle in both legs, but otherwise everything was fine and — after hitting pause to make sure I wasn’t actually dead and just didn’t realize it yet — I continued on my way.

Here’s what I heard this morning:

• The Dirty Glass — Dropkick Murphys
• Hit the Road Jack — Ray Charles
• I Try to Think about Elvis — Patty Loveless
• All These Things That I’ve Done — Killers
• My Coco — Stellastarr*
• The Boxer — Simon & Garfunkel
• ‘Till I Collapse — Eminem
• Beverly Hills — Weezer
• Sugar, We’re Goin Down — Fallout Boy
• Bruises — Chairlift
• Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny) (featuring Nicole Scherzinger and The Pussycat Dolls) — AR Rahman