In the Meantime, I get back in the groove

After sort of a down week last week, not feeling great and struggling through a few runs, the past few days have seemed to bring me back. I did an easy seven miler yesterday and a good hard workout today (6x800). I would have added another 1-2 repeats, but I had to get showered and get to work. Every so often, I hit these ruts, usually because my body is tired and the workouts are taking their toll, it is always just a matter of getting through it and knowing that I always come out stronger.

The seven miler yesterday was made all the easier because I had Helmet's Meantime playing on the iPod. I think "pummeling" is a good (and frequent) way to describe this album. The lead guitarist has a Jazz performance degree and he uses it to make full on, wall-of-guitar, assaulting heavy metal with subtle shifts in time signatures and riffs that make Jimmy Page weep. This is some serious stuff. As I mellow out as I grow older, some albums lose their appeal because they are just too much. Meantime just gets better and better. I think that not being hung up on how loud and fast a band can play, but how they use loud and fast as an ingredient in an overall meal that manages to both rip your face off and be graceful and subtle at the same time.

Of course, I could just be full of crap. Maybe it just makes running easier because it pushes my testosterone levels into the stratosphere and brings me back to the macho world of high school athletics. Since I am training for a marathon, maybe that is not such a bad thing.