Bel In The Road

This was fun.  And brutal at the same time.

Sometime either earlier this week or last week, my friend Sean posted a blog about how he was tired of seeing the same running route every time he logged a run.  He wanted to do something different.  Our friend Kashi posted a link to this and it got him inspired.  So a few days later he ran his initials out on the road and a challenge was born.  Well, OK, nothing official yet (still waiting on Kashi's "official" challenge) but it got me wanting to participate.

I took to the internet and struggled to find an area where I could map out "Bel".  Without running on any major roads (something I'm afraid to do because I will get hit by a car or fall into the middle of the highway and get run over by a bus) my neighborhood is literally just 3 loops.  That's it.  Everything else is a main road.  (As illustrated here - red being roads, yellow being main roads that I don't really want to run on).  Clearly this meant that I would have to drive over to another part of Burlington to make this happen.  So I looked and quickly found the perfect place not that far away.

This was the most planned out run I've ever done!  I was so afraid of getting lost and couldn't remember all the turns I had to make, especially with all of the backtracking I had to do.  Luckily Wifey was on the phone with me guiding me step by step.  I am so thankful that she not only allowed me the time to do this but also was my navigation system throughout even though the kids were not exactly on their best behavior.  So BIG thank you to wifey for making this happen!  Love you!

As for the run, it wasn't my best time by any means.  Here's the link to all the stats.  It took me over 34 minutes to run just above a 5K.  I think that's actually my WORST time to date!  But today was not about that.  Today was not about times or speed or distance.  Today was about having some fun and doing something different.  There were a few people out there who probably thought I was crazy because of all the turnarounds & backtracks I had to do.  I must have looked like I was either lost or had no idea what I was doing!  And then there was the fact that I was talking to Wifey on the phone - most people probably just thought I was a crazy person talking to myself and didn't realize that the headphones were actually the phone and not music.  Oh well.  And then the dogs...seriously!  Does everybody in this part of Burlington have a nasty-ass dog that they leave out in their yard??!!  I don't even know how many dogs I passed that were fighting to leap their tiny fences to have at me!  Of course there were some cute friendly ones too that were just loud and happy to see someone, but there were a lot of really nasty ones out there!

All in all it was a good workout and something fun and different to do.  Hopefully I'll get the chance to do something else like this again but for now I gotta get my butt in gear for the St. Patty's race!

...And Sickness Takes All

Well!!  It's been an interesting few weeks!  There were several runs in-between my last blog & this one that I didn't recap but I have not been as on top of my running as I would have liked.  The girl turned 4 which is incredible to me, and I haven't run in over 2 weeks because this stomach virus has been going through our house & my family has been dropping like flies! 

Now that the stomach part seems to be leaving, we've all got this head/chest cold settling in.  But I wasn't going to let that stop me from running.  This morning was the first opportunity I've had in 2 weeks to get a run in and I wasn't going to miss it!  Sure, I haven't had any sleep in over 2 weeks (average of 2 hours a night when I'm lucky, some none at all!), and yeah I'm hacking up a lung and I can't breathe through my nose.  But I have a race to prepare for!  And it's in less than a month!!

My time was limited because wifey had to get ready for work so I knew I wasn't in for 3 miles.  In fact, I figured on just a mile so that I can get in some of my other exercises too.  My goal wasn't speed, it was just to get moving again.  I was struggling to breathe and exhausted so I wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone.  I just needed to get moving again.

I did a quarter mile warmup walk and then jogged for a mile.  I haven't jogged this slow in quite a while - the one mile took me 11:58!  But I don't think I could have handled any faster today.  I wish I had more time to do more because I felt like I was just hitting my groove again when I had to stop.  Oh well - maybe I'll get more time tonight.  Wifey is leaving for business again this week so my run time is going to be limited so I have to squeeze in as much as I can while she's here.  Hopefully this chest cold won't last long so that I can start working on speed again and get ready for race day!  Either way, it felt great to get moving again!  Hopefully sickness is over for the rest of the winter - I think we have more than paid our dues for the year!