Thank goodness Jacob got home early from work yesterday. I excitedly changed my clothes, laced up my shoes, and took my inhaler hits. I opened the door, stepped outside, and instantly felt nervous. Running without Jacob feels just wrong. Like I'm all of a sudden very vulnerable to everything- the elements, people, and above all, myself. I composed myself, stretched, and strutted my way down the street and saw my worst nightmare swooping over my designated starting line. A flock of seagulls.
No, seriously, one of my biggest fears in life is to get pooped on by a bird. I just don't know if I can handle it. And right there, outside the choice liquor store at the end of my street, is a whole flock of birds. I couldn't figure out why until I turned the corner and discovered that there was a guy throwing out bird seed or bread or something for them. I patiently waited at the other corner under the guise of messing with my iPod, but just as the birds started to disperse, he threw more bread out! Grr! I couldn't wait any longer, so just decided to chance it and go. The man apologized while his friends (super classy while they hang out at the bus stop, ooohhh yeah, swoon) leered at me passing. Ick.
My legs felt tired already after not even a mile but I was determined to finish this run out. My goal was five and I was going to hit it, dammit!! So I told myself that I would allow rest at stop lights while waiting for the walk sign and I could walk through the crosswalks on the way back home. I was feeling shin-tired, but overall felt great. The weather was perfect for a run. There were a lot of cyclists out too since I run on a main street through town. They usually aren't very friendly, but yesterday was the exception. They all waved and said hey as they went past. Except for one, who yelled HI from across the four lane road. I waved politely and carried on, until the stop light when the guy actually had turned around and rode back to talk to me. Yikes!! This guy shops regularly at the grocery store I used to work at so I recognized him as a pretty hard core cyclist. I figured a little banter on training might be nice. So when he asked how I was, I was ok with that. How many miles I was going, I was ok with that. How old I was, not so ok with that one. I told him I don't answer that question and his response was, 'oh, very young I can tell'. And with that he turned his bike around and headed in his original direction. Phew.
This stretch of road that I run on- I like it because it's got sidewalks most of the way and it's very heavily trafficked. The heavy traffic I used to hate because everyone sees me and looks at me, but then at the same time if everyone is seeing and looking at me, hopefully no-one will mess with me. After dark is another story. I would not venture out on this strip of road by myself after dark, mostly because it is known for it's choice occupation-solicitation. Knowing this, I thought two/three/four times about taking off my top layer long sleeved shirt and just running in my tank and decided against it each time. That was probably a good idea being that it was a weird temperature. It was cold enough to need the long sleeves but then not. I rolled up the sleeves to expose my wrists and I had to pull them back down because I wound up feeling cold.
So in the end, I had to cut my run a little short due to some road construction at my turnaround point. I wound up running 4.6 miles, and traveling approximately 5 miles with my warm up and cool down. It took me around 55 minutes to do the run portion, which was 12:01 mile. Not terribly bad, but I'm hoping I can drop more weight and speed up a little bit so I can hit my goal.
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