【文青跑誌】9th Week Training Log

 

“Are you ready?” MV asked me when we were heading to the runner’s high after we had lunch buffet in an Indian restaurant on Friday. 

Knowing she was referring to the race, I replied,“More or less.”and then remembered my husband always turns this answer of mine to a question by asking, “more? or less?”.  In this case, I was “more” ready for the race a couple of weeks ago but “less ready” now. This past week, because of a sudden uptick of my workload, I hadn’t run at all since last Sunday. I already started feeling sluggish, now after an Indian buffet, even more so. So “more? or less” ? It had to be “less”.

Saturday morning, I ran six miles, within an unimpressive 1:13:33.  I even took some energy food that I bought at runner’s high. But it felt as if the effects never kicked in. I thought about what I heard on NPR about Lance Armstrong’s doping.  His teammate was saying one time, he ran out of Epogen and had to borrow one from Lance. Epogen was a drug developed by my previous employer and I worked on it around 2007. At that time, I didn’t know I was making contributions to the blood doping industry. I only knew it was boosting red blood cells for cancer patients. Now I have left the company for almost half a year. Hearing the drug’s name and thinking about the commute I have to endure, I wonder if I regret leaving it. Sometimes I do and want to go back.  Maybe I will go back in the future, who knows. Here is what I wrote to the department in my farewell email, titled: Goodbye Seems to Be the Hardest Word (It took me a while to find this email, so I think it’s a good idea to post it here for the sake of record-keeping.)

My apologies to Sir Elton John for mutilating the title of his famous song, Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, however I do disagree with him on this. I find it easy to apologize, but I have always struggled with the dreaded ‘Goodbye’. Saying goodbye to xx means saying goodbye to an era, to a group of great friends and coworkers, and to my 5-plus-year affiliation with a great company.

 I enjoyed working for xx and working with all of you tremendously. The only thing that made me leave is the location. As you know I have been working remotely for more than three years.  It is a great benefit from xx that I could work from home and a lot of people are envious. But I have realized recently it doesn’t fit my personality very well.

So it’s time to move on and time to say goodbye. I wish all of you the best. Please keep in touch. My personal email is: …

Goodbye. And I hope that I will be saying “Hello!” to you all pretty soon as I am sure our paths will cross again.