Routine Running

Three weeks sounds like a pretty long time to me. You would think that after having the same schedule for three weeks, a person could feel like they were actually starting to get used to a routine. I am feeling a bit more comfortable with my schedule and classes now, but I still have trouble with some really simple things like being on time. I have been on time for work and for all my classes so far, but I have not been quite as punctual for some other things. Over Labor Day weekend, Andrew and I bought weekend train passes and we ended up going downtown three different times. The first time, Andrew and David (who was visiting for the weekend) went downtown and saw the sights, but I had practice that morning with Glee Club and the other choirs (we practiced with Women’s Chorale and the concert Choir) so I went downtown with a friend and met them for dinner. It turned out that the line at Giordano’s was longer than we thought it would be and by the time we finished eating it was only twenty minutes before the time that our train was supposed to leave. We started walking back to the train station, then David suggested running. About one block later my shoe lace snapped. I don’t know how to describe running in practically laceless shoes. The hardest part is keeping your foot flat instead of lifting your heel first. If you have run for a long distance in flip-flops you probably have a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about. I think I just realized why a certain muscle in my right leg was particularly sore when we were walking downtown the next day. In any case, we made it to the station out of breath, and saw the train still in the station, but the guard wouldn’t let us get on because the doors were already closed. So we ended up sitting in the station’s food court working on a crossword puzzle and reading for two hours until the 10:40 train came. Since then, I think I have run to catch three trains at College Ave. I have caught all of them so far, but I’d rather not get into the habit of it, if it isn’t already too late. I think I know what my problem is. The first full day I was here I timed my walk from my room to the cafeteria: six minutes. So ever since, I think I have been subconsciously assuming that it only takes six minutes to walk anywhere on campus, which just is not true. I now know that it takes about six minutes to run to the train station. And about ten minutes to power walk to the conservatory building or the Wade Center. Fortunately, except for Thursdays, when my Physics lab ends at 4:05 (unless my group takes longer, like the last two weeks) to get to Glee Club at 4:15, I’m usually not far from where I need to be. My microeconomics class is right in the middle of campus so it is easy to get to the Wade Center, and my science classes and labs are right next to the student center/cafeteria, so it only takes about three minutes (and two flights of stairs) to get to my Physics class from breakfast.
Last Sunday (the day after the failed train run), Andrew, David, some of Andrew’s friends and I went downtown. We tossed a Frisbee at the park and hung out at the Jazz Fest, then we went to Navy Pier, then the beach (yes there is a beach in downtown Chicago). It’s kind of funny, I remember a certain muscle in my right leg being really sore that day, and I could not understand why. It just occurred to me that it may have had something to do with the awkward way that I ran to the train station the day before. Since then I have been hanging out with a certain group of Andrew’s friends quite a bit and it turns out one of them is in my Physics class and another is the T.A. for that Physics lab and is in Women’s Chorale, and I tend to run into them around campus. It’s a bit confusing when they call Andrew, “Flavin” but to make things easier they call me “little Flavin”, which I think is funny because not very many people call me little anymore. It was really fun hanging out with them. We had a lot of fun.
In my Wellness class, one assignment is to exercise for at least half an hour five days a week. It doesn’t sound very hard, and it really should not be very hard. Nevertheless, it’s been a struggle for me. It has been a little easier since I joined an intermural Ultimate Frisbee team, and there is a swing dancing club that meets on Tuesdays, but the other three days are hard for me. I think it’s mainly because I don’t really know what to do. Half an hour is not really that long, and I do generally enjoy exercise, but the only sport really played at home was racquetball, and they don’t have racquetball courts here. I might take up tennis, but until then, my primary alternatives are running and weight lifting, neither of which are particularly thrilling to me. A few days ago I went running with someone on my floor named Drew. We ran for about fifteen minutes until we got to the Glen Ellyn library, spent a few minutes there and ran back. I enjoyed that, but mainly just because it was something new. Last night, I was starting to get worried because it was late, and I had not gotten my exercise in yet. It was during open floors so a few guys from our floor went to the lobby on our sister floor and started playing spoons with some of the girls there. After we started kept thinking, “I should really get going, I still need to get in my half an hour of exercise.” But then we started playing Ultimate Spoons. In case you haven’t played spoons before, it’s pretty simple, all you need to do is pass cards around in a circle, keeping four cards in your hand at a time, until someone has four of the same number, then they can grab a spoon. There is one less spoon than people playing, so one person ends up without a spoon and that person is out. Ultimate Spoons is more like an extreme Easter egg hunt. Instead of placing the spoons in the middle of the circle, we put the spoons all over our floor and our sister floor. So, as soon as someone got a set of four, everyone bolted for the door and sprinted down the hall. Of course, the lobby door was facing the other direction, so to get out of the lobby we had to turn 180 degrees and sprint the other direction, then we had to turn 90 degrees and sprint past the stairwell and down our floor. Near the end of the game, when there were only a few people left, other people started hiding the spoons all over the place. In one round, I ran from one end of the hall to the other three times, and another time up and down four flights of stairs a few times, once someone gave us a hint about the last two spoons. For the last round, on a hunch I popped a balloon lying on the ground and found the last spoon. Since I lasted all the way to the end, I counted that for my exercise yesterday. I’m not sure what my professor will think when he sees “extreme spoons” on my workout log, but I underlined “extreme” three times, so hopefully he’ll get the idea.
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