Run/swim/run and channelling Poe

So yesterday I wanted to get in a run. The weather was a perfect 75 degrees when I got home from work today so it was just screaming for me to get out and play somehow. I also wanted to get in a swim. Hmmm...how do you get both in?

It's easy! My gym is 2 miles from the house. I wanted to get in about a 4 mile run. Perfect! So in the spirit of training for the tri, I put on my tr-shorts (a little snug these days) and a running tank, grabbed my super-absorbent camp towel and goggles and took off.

A quick side note, about 1/2 mile into the run, a girl turned in ahead of me from another side street. At first glance she looked like she was a serious runner with her waist belt filled with 4 bottles. Then I looked to see her in pink running shoes and a skirt. Now that's just taking the whole girl-power thing too far, but maybe I'm just a tad bit skeptical. LOL! Oh well. It turns out I was able to pass her without much trouble. But the thing is, she's a shuffler in her footsteps. I could hear her shuffled steps behind me, sort of like Poe's Tell-Tale Heart. It drove me nuts! The shuf-shuf-shuffling of her feet made me push my pace a little more. Only this and nothing more.

In any case, I didn't hear her anymore so I assume she turned off at one of the other side streets. Made it to the gym in 19 minutes, so that came to a 9 1/2 minute mile-ish. I was more than content with that since my legs are still tired from Saturday. I went straight to the pool, wrestled a lady for a lane (she and her husband were in separate lanes doing snorkel swimming) and put in 25 minutes in the pool. This leg is going to scare me at the tri.

Afterwards I dried off and headed back out to home. I felt conspicuously bare in the shorts and still wet from the pool. I hit the turn point at Garden Ridge and Kirkpatrick, heading north. Not a few minutes into that, the shuffling comes back. Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

It was an eye-opening moment though, and an expectation I'll need to set come race day.