Friday, February 18, 2005

It's been a while since my last post...

I am on a business trip. I went running the other day. Chose the biggest city park, conveniently located a few blocks away from my hotel. Left at 6.30am, half awake. I was planning on doing a 5 mile/45min loop, full of fresh morning intentions - and I paced myself for this dynamic morning re-adaptation to life.

I got totally lost. I did two or three loops inside the park, at a very professional looking pace, waiving at the patrols along the way, greeting dog strollers and admiring these weird flashy orange gates that have mushroomed everywhere. Found a cute icy lake and some Star Trek decor looking rocky hills before finally ending up on the North side of the park, when I was really looking to go back to the southWest entrance. I was also some 70 streets north of my origin. I ran a quick market analysis in the back of my brain (and old reflex acquired in business school, seems to run constantly as a background job now) and concluded: not good.

I tried to zig zag back through the park, ran all around some large reservoir only to find myself on the exact opposite side again from where I really wanted to go. I was facing East and wanted to go West. this stupid sun chose not to show up, so i didn't know which way West was. I tried many paths and bridges, got chased by a tiny dog who could run surprisingly fast given the size of his legs (maybe I was surprisingly slow given the size of mine) - stopped for half a second to ask for directions. I spotted a lady who was walking dogs from an entire neighborhood - managed to hear her say "you must exit the park" in the midst of barking and roaring and finally, picked a direction and started to look for an exit sign. I had long stopped trusting the twists and turns inside this evil park.

I ran all the way back ALONGSIDE the park, on the west side, until I found my point of origin. I was another mile or so away from my hotel, which I covered at supersonic speed as I was getting horribly late for my first meeting.

Bottom line, I ran between 10 to 12 miles, and was out for 1 hr and 40 min.

Since then I have mutated into a snail.

But really the reason for my posting something is simply because I did promise some late perspective on this blog - and I have not forgotten my promise. I will get organized around it...one day