I lied; Wait, Wait

Words 586; one Wait, Wait recording

            I truly think that the mind has a huge influence on the performance of the body.  Generally, when I run certain distances, at first, I think that I am running as quickly as I can.  When I run faster, I believe a large part of the quicker finish is due to the fact that my mind TELLS me that I can run faster.  Today, however, was a different story—
one that may disprove all I’ve thought.  Well, of course it won’t disprove anything, but it may provide some evidence to the contrary.

            I began the run today jogging slowly and feeling sluggish. My neck is still stiff and hurting a bit—a holdover from the weird events of last Monday; thus I immediately pledged NOT to do the two extra sets of pull-ups.  I was feeling damaged.  I got to the venue of the mid-run sprint with the mindset of someone with troubles.  I began as usual, but I felt that I was NOT on my toes as I should be.  I pushed my effort, arms and legs were stressed.  The concrete in the legs began much earlier than usual.  I was thinking throughout the sprint that I was not going to achieve anything good.  In the middle, I can remember thinking that the finish line was much too far away.  I was ready to see 1:02, or worse.  I consciously gave it everything right up until the finish, while I OFTEN find the button on my watch some steps before the end.  After all was said and done, I was pleasantly surprised to see a display full of zeros.  Only 3 hundredths of a second slower than 1 minute. A fine result, and good enough to earn the right to run up 6 flights of stairs instead of 16.

            Why have I lied?  Lying may be too strong. What I mean is that I may have overstated the power of positive thinking.  Today, I was thinking the whole time that I would NOT achieve a good result.  I told myself that I was tired and my body was sore. If there were ever a negative attitude to take into a sprint, I had it today. 

            While the body was tough, my ears were delighted.  I heard a fabulous, hilarious Wait, Wait episode.  One of the panelists was my favorite, Tom Bodett.  But he wasn’t the star of the show.  The star was Bobcat Goldthwait.  The funniest moments often come when the guests mention things that are obscurely unrelated to the news, or to something mentioned earlier in the show.  This week, Bobcat gave some insightful zingers about eating children and getting a cat’s litter box out of a tree.

Here is the best 2.5 minutes:

I have eaten insects when I was in Thailand.  It will take some getting used to, but it's not out of the question.

The Russian people certainly do appreciate beauty.  I returned to the apartment today to find two people staring up into the sky.  Not just for a moment, either.  They had their eyes fixed up there for more than 5 minutes…all the time that I was doing pull-ups and squats.  I walked up to the grimy, gruff-looking workman. 

            “What are you looking at?”

            “Right there!” he motioned to the perfectly empty, perfectly blue sky. 

            “That brown pigeon?”

            “Yes…Vo…there!  Look!  Vo-o-o!” he said with a huge smile. “That’s beautiful!” he added reverently.  I could see a brown pigeon, and a black and white pigeon.  Then I got a whiff of his alcohol laden breath.  The interesting thing is, though, that there was also an elderly woman staring at the same place.   Hmmmm.