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1hr40 on the TM today.  I started off easy and gradually pushed it to what felt like my vague approximation of marathon pace effort.  That sounds perhaps uncertain, but I really don't know my present marathon pace, and my goals are modest anyway.  It'll be warm and humid, so if I end up around 4 hrs, I'll be happy.   It won't be the first 4-hr skanky hot marathon I will have run.

During today's run, I watched most of a movie about visualizing 10 dimensions, to the accompaniment of a playlist tribute to Zyzz.  I don't wish to derail this post further, but Zyzz is the tragic young hero of aesthetic bodybuilding who died a few years ago in a Thai sauna or Thai massage parlour, depending on the account; cue hand-wringing over young folly/ego/superficiality (scads written already)...but he was a fan of trance music.   I've recently discovered the fan playlist tributes and so far, they've been super.  We're all going to make it, brah, but there are different types of trance, and some of them annoy me while others are incredibly uplifting and transporting. 

Anyway, I didn't notice when I started to get run-stupid, but by 86 minutes and 45 seconds, I realized that the words weren't sinking in.  But the cool graphics and music were adequate distractions by that point.  It didn't matter that I didn't understand much of the multi-universe or whatever even when my brain was receiving the usual bloodflow/glycogen.  However, I think a bit of 4th dimensional regard might make discomfort more bearable: instead of running for X number of increasingly slow minutes, I could consider that I simply exist in this state of discomfort.  It just is: deal with it.  And, if I wanted to be really creative, I could consider that an alternative me is in a state of less discomfort and I could perhaps trick myself into believing that....

Actually, I'll shelve that until I next achieve run-stupidity (long run this weekend!), but I've had a true stroke of brilliance today.  I've been running (ok, mostly jogging) for about 14 years, but I've just realized that my feet are small enough for youth shoes, and that these are considerably cheaper than women's shoes.   Update to follow.