8 miles!

The word of the day on Saturday was muggy. So muggy, in fact, that I actually produced sweat. One of my lucky genetic aberrations—at least as far as running goes—is that I barely get moist on even the hottest, stickiest days. Which is lucky in that I never have chafing issues … but unlucky in that I tend to overheat quickly and collapse in a puddle of light-headed delirium. Not unlike the Dubya administration.

Speaking of delirium, the fiancé and I took Matthew to dinner on Friday for his birthday … which is technically in May, but coordinating our three schedules has been a bit of a challenge this summer. We found a nice little outdoor Italian place where we could carbo-load before Saturday’s big run while we watched Chicago’s hoi polloi saunter by après work. The restaurant’s dessert menu was kind of lame, so Matthew suggested we head up to the Ghirardelli store in the heart of touristville and indulge on fatty ice cream sundaes. Which we did. And as we were sitting at the Ghirardelli (motto: Ice cream sundaes with just a hint of ice cream!) sidewalk café, I noticed the table next to us start staring wide-eyed at the sidewalk. Then Matthew and the fiancé started staring wide-eyed at the sidewalk. And since my back was to the sidewalk and I am nothing if not subtle, I whipped my head around to see what all the wide-eyededness was about. And there, in all his delirium-inducing (See? I eventually got around to paying off the first sentence of this paragraph. And you were worried I’d go off on a tangent.) dreaminess was gracefully aging hair-band rocker Jon Bon Jovi. Swoon!

But Jon’s hotness apparently threw off the barometric pressure or something similarly weather-man-sounding because by the time we woke up on Saturday to run, the air was like unset Jell-O. Or something slightly more weather-man-sounding. It also must have done something to Matthew’s camera, because I came out looking more than a little goofy in most of the pictures he took. For instance:

For some reason—either the moist-like-a-Duncan-Hines-cake weather or the fact that Saturday’s eight miles constituted a “short” run after the 17 miles we did two weeks ago—only five of our 15ish pace group members showed up this weekend. So this week’s photos show a vastly diminished dramatis personæ.

Here we are at the mile 5 water station. See my tank top? It started out as a jogging bra, but the humidity stretched the damn thing out until it looked like a kicky A-line camisole. Notice the sexy sweat pattern under my aging manboobs:

Here we are a mile later on the Belmont bridge. My jogging bra is now billowing like a Mayan burial gown, the sweat patterns make it look like I’m overdue to feed the baby and Matthew’s goofy camera makes me look more stunned than Dubya being asked to name the days of the week at a press conference:

By the time we’d slogged our way through eight miles of Jell-O, I had somehow found my halfway-normal face and I even got to hold the sign (for the second time this summer!) in our weekly team photo:

Next week we’re running 20 miles, and early weather predictions include words like “high temperatures.” I don’t speak weather, so we’ll have to wait until next weekend to find out what those words mean. And if they’re capable of killing a blogger who’s just learning how to sweat.