6.3 mile run

The past week or two has been chaos. I interviewed for, then got a new job so my life has been turned upside down. Of course, I have to admit to a few happy hours to celebrate the change, which lead to less sleep and not wanting to get up in the morning to work out. It's an ugly cycle. The nights I didn't go out, I stewed about what the change would bring and all the worrying. Suffice to say, I have a week under my belt now at the new job and it's time to get back on the road. The half is coming up really soon!

So it's been a while since I've posted. Or run.

I'm sort of wierd about the time to run. I do best first thing in the morning before I've had a diet Coke and much to eat. If I get a shower, likely I won't run either. I will occasionally run in the afternoon after I get off work, but that's only if lunch wasn't too big. You've gotta get through the hangups, right? LOL!

Saturday I didn't run. We had a trail cleanup for our trail running club I organized, then I had a ton of homework to get done. So I did what I had to do. Procrastinated it until Sunday afternoon.

Long story short, I ended up prying myself away from my Accounting studying to go for a run. Damn, it felt great! The last run I'd done was 2 weeks before (but I rode 145 miles on my bike in between), but it wasn't bad. I needed to up the mileage and did by a mile.

The weather was a perfect 73-ish degrees and I planned the route to mostly be a crosswind and the headwind at only the beginning. I'm no dummy. I went to mapmyrun.com and plotted out a 6-ish miler, extending one of my regular 5-mile runs to include a new area.

I purposely left and headed toward the newer part of the route first, so that I would be forced to finish the whole route. I couldn't get to a crossroads and opt out. I had to do the whole thing. I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to make it.

This time of year is just gorgeous. The leaves are starting to change here and lawns are sprinkled with fun Halloween decorations. Some even play music. Most decorations make me laugh at the creativity or ostentatiousness of it all. It passes the time, and I like that.

It was tough to get in the groove at first; side stitches take over at about a mile or so. But they sort themselves out by the time I hit a major intersection at nearly 3 miles in. I turned the corner and walked for the time it took to get to the next sign, maybe 30-ish seconds. The legs started finally feeling stronger as I pushed up a small incline (I can't even call it a hill). The next thing I knew, I saw the power lines that go down the middle of the final turnoff street and I was thrilled. I hung on with exactly a 10mph pace, which for as little as I've trained, I'll take.

By Monday evening, everything was tightening up and I'm sore. It will get better. Now if I could only catch those Lufkins!