Running herds, or herds running

A certain increase in energy can be detected in the park these days. The numbers of serious runners have upped considerably, and they are zipping along with a vengeance. My training group informs me that next month there will a local triathlon, and they are planning on entering.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------May is without doubt the worst month in the year for us; it shows the most extremes of temperature changes, and the hottest days of the summer (even though it is supposed to be springtime). People who will compete in the triathlon may have a day of a lovely 60°F. or a hellish 115°F. The sun may burn down like Death Valley, or it could rain enough to turn the entire event into just the swimming part. With only a month to go, the contenders are training like gangbusters, and the park is a weird combination of a traffic jam and a Nascar event.-------------------With the changes in temperature around here right now, and ups and downs in the barometric pressure, we fibro sufferers are having an acute flare. I could barely finish my training schedule on Monday and had to crawl home in order to save energy, so today I decided to trick my fibromyalgia into thinking it has the upper hand. I went over 5K, but I did it by walking for two minutes, then running for two minutes. It worked just fine, so fine, in fact, that I plan to stick to this mode until the current attack wears off.-------------------------------------------------As usual, since I got to walk, I saw some pretty oddball stuff going on around me. But one nice thing was that there are people in their seventies and eighties chugging along determindly, and they even have enough breath to say "hello, how are you today?" I acknowledge with a wave of the hand in order not to waste oxygen on speech. Let me mention at this point that the Nascar runners are able to carry on a complete conversation as they pound along, even telling jokes and laughing uproariously; since most of them are men, one is impressed by a very serious lack of vocabulary, which may explain why their conversation seems limited to remarks about running time, injuries, and automobiles, punctuated every couple of seconds by an insulting epithet--sort of like teenage boys making idiots of themselves by pretending to hit each other, laughing foolishly, drooling, and ogling the girls. Not that our Nascar runners do that, but their conversation is on the same high plane. The fact that woman are present all over the park doesn't register with them, because some of the expletives are gross indeedy. Oh well.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today I had a good look at one of the odder participants in our mass madness. This woman carries ski poles. At first you might think she is training for a cross country ski event, but closer examination ("Watson, tell me everything, leaving out no detail, however insignificant...") it just can't be. Cross country skiing is the most aerobically demanding sport of all, since one's heart rate climbs to about 220 and stays there kilometer after kilometer--you get into a groove, all right, but it's a killer groove. This woman's body moves in two modes: with her legs she is simply strolling along, being passed even by me. But her upper body is wiggling from side to side as she moves the ski poles, in a fashion no cross country skier would be caught dead emulating. The overall effect is hilarious-- a kind of swishy git-along augmented by a superior, transcendental smirk on her face as if the rest of us are mere insects. More than once I've seen a runner stagger off to the side of the path, apparently afflicted by a side stitch, upon passing this woman, but I know for sure that runner is laughing his guts out. I think, in fact, that if running events really wanted to challenge the participants, they could sprinkle the route with weirdos like this gal. It would take mental discipline above and beyond the call of duty not to lose precious minutes and even more precious oxygen each time you came across one of these distractions. "Die laughing" could take on a whole new meaning.