The Truant's Tale

The training book I'm following said there was a good chance it would happen, and it finally did. Yesterday. On a day I was supposed to run five miles, I just didn't. Not the end of the world, certainly--I've read the only runs you really can't skip are the long once--but I still have my regrets.

Like the regret I feel for marring my 10-week streak of perfect runner's attendance. Or the regret I feel disguised as dread that a member of the Grub Street police state (which exists only in my guilty imaginings) has written me up some sort of existential ticket. Or the regret I have about spending the whole day thinking I'll run later, later, and later still, instead of embracing the rebel I never quite got around to being in high school, declaring yesterday a total loss, and savoring the devilishly delicious taste of bad behavior throughout the day. Instead, I only gave up on the run well past midnight when it was patently obvious that heading out for five miles at that hour would be stubbornly ludicrous.

Now if I could only apply this valuable lesson about the merits of letting go early to the bloated behemoth of a novel outline skulking in the corner of my study where it laughs and laughs and laughs....