Little Victories

I awoke on my bathroom floor with a penny stuck to my ass - and I hadn't even been drinking.

Sunday was an epic hard run on a horrible day. Then I spent the day trying to avoid cooking by eating whatever was left in the fridge. That led to food poisoning: proteins, sugars and liquid should not be stored together for more than a week even at 40 degrees. And that was why I was sleeping by the toilet.

The penny? Well, I'm not sure really, but I went to the Ramsey County Fair on Sunday and my pockets did end up full of change and odd debris. If you live in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area, you really should take in that particular fair some day, just for the feeling of superiority that it brings. One year, when they announced the attendance, my sister asked how they came up with the number - I said, "Counted teeth, divided by four." The agricultural exhibits are sad; the only farms in the county are museums. The parade down White Bear Avenue goes past boarded up strip malls and the grand marshal is whoever's still in business; my favorite was the year it was a guy out on parole. The highlight is usually the fire department playing a game where they try to move beer kegs along a wire with their hoses. My favorite thing is the rides - forty year old equipment held together with baling wire and being run by guys named Icepick and Boxcar; no ride anywhere else is nearly as scary, as once every other year there seems to be an accident.

But this morning I went for a run anyway. The dewpoint had dropped to 74 by 7 AM, and that's as good as we're going to get for a while. The plan was to run 75 minutes with a good portion at marathon pace; instead, my heart rate was sky high at 8 1/2 minutes per mile and I called it a day still shy of one hour on my feet.

That's a victory, in my book. The coming week's going to be rough weather; I'm hoping for several little victories.