Working on my fitness - Part 2

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm training for a race at the end of the summer. I'm running or swimming several times a week.

I generally choose to run one of two places: Oroño Boulevard up to Parque España or en Parque Independencia.

I like Oroño for the most part. It has a pedestrian walk way between the driving lanes. It's lined with tall palm trees and benches with lions carved into them. Apartment buildings, small universities, and restaurants sit side-by-side on the periphery. It is, however, paved with tile and littered with community contributions left by dogs. The tile makes my spine feel like a hammer striking an anvil every time my shoes hit it and the poop makes me leave my shoes on the balcony when I get home.

If I run for longer than fifty minutes I make it to Parque España and I run along the river on trails left in the grass. The wind coming off the river is cold, but by the time I make it that far I welcome the breeze.

When I don't run on Oroño I run laps around the paved paths in Parque Independencia. The Newell's Old Boys soccer stadium is right in the middle. All the trees are either covered in gnarly thorns or the branches have been pruned too high for me to reach them. Otherwise I would have taken a tree-climbing break in a least one of them.

I usually go in the afternoon, but a few weeks ago I decided to go in the morning. I could tell that it was fairly cold outside from looking out the window, so I decided to put on a long sleeved shirt instead of a short sleeved one. I pulled on my blue running shorts and left the apartment.

I got those shorts at Target, I'll have you know. They're light and breezy and loose. And as the name suggests, they are short.

On my way to Oroño Boulevard, I noticed that I could see my breath. It was a little colder than I expected, but nothing I couldn't handle. An academic-looking man with longerish curly hair looked at my legs and asked me if I was cold. I was jogging in place waiting for the light to change. "Yeah, but I'm fine," I said.

It wasn't until I had run about seven blocks that I realized that showing so much leg at 40° F was very much out of the cultural norm. Any time I stopped at an intersection, a car would pass and the driver inside would yell something at me (most of the time I couldn't understand what he said). As I turned toward the river on Oroño I passed a group of teenagers and a girl shrieked, pointed, and said, "Why does she do that?!" One man asked me where I was from and then told me I was going to get sick. Doris from the self-reliance group I'm facilitating saw me as she was taking her daughter to school. "Mommy, what is that girl doing?" her daughter asked. Doris was about to explain to her that some people are crazy when she realized it was me.

I had no idea that my choice of leg wear would call so much attention. I kind of felt like I was in a strange, long distance race where everyone was kind of cheering on. Every once in a while, I'd hear a, "Dale! Dale! Dale!" from across the road and I would image myself crossing the finish line with explosions of confetti and posters that say things like, "No pain, no gain." It was somewhat nice to have so many supporters on a Monday.

I don't run on cold mornings anymore. At least not wearing shorts, anyway.