Last week was an 80+ hour work week. It was a good week for getting through the papers that had been piling up on on my desks and all over the floor of my office. I whittled my email In-Box down from 287 messages to 82. I got back to most of the folks who had left voice mail messages. I brought a project almost to completion and got some headway into year-end accounting paperwork while listening to tunes from Zimbabwe on the Internet at 2:00 am. It was, however, not a great week for running.
On Friday afternoon, I got a call from Chris Mager. Chris is a very accomplished ultramarathon runner and a great friend who, given family, work and a raft of other poor reasons, I'd not spoken to for a long time. It was a gorgeous warm, sunny day. It was late September and the leaves were starting to turn, but I was missing out 'cause I'd been working in my basement home office beavering away on a computer and the telephone. Chris and I agreed that life was too short to miss the opportunity for a run together.
I actually feel guilty when I go for a run during the day. (You can replace "run" with "swim", "bike ride", "ski", "snowshoe" or other outdoor activity.) I shouldn't, but I do. I find myself trying to justify my actions to myself. "I was up until 2:15 last night working, so I've earned the right to dog it for an hour." "I was out at business meetings 3 evenings this week, so I've earned a run." As if my boss is going to fire me or something. (I'm self-employed.)
Chris and I had a great run together. We talked about all kids of stuff. As we ran along the power line trail at the base of Grouse Mountain, we tried to spot a $50M house in West Van that Chris is working on. We smiled and said, "Hi" to the doggie walkers and stopped to pay our respects to the 500 year old Grandpa Capilano (a Douglas fir) as we negotiated some rough trails in the canyon.
As we were running, my brain somehow tuned in a song called Afternoon Delight by the Starland Vocal Band. I also thought about a comment a work associate once made that went something like, "On your deathbed, you'll never think back about the extra hours you could have put in at work."
Thanks for the run, Chris! We ought to do it more often.
