October 16, 2006
Talked to my friend Steve yesterday when we went to a social at Norm and Ken’s house to meet some of the candidates for city council and the school board. Steve is a runner as well, so he was asking me about things right before we were getting ready to leave.
Got to talking about the 10K for Run to Feed the Hungry and he was very supportive: “Oh, yeah, you can do it!”
We also talked a little bit about Bay to Breakers, which is a 12K in San Francisco. I want to do that one, but it’s on the same weekend as Run with Nature, so I don’t know that I’ll be doing it next year. I need to rerun Run with Nature, as it was my first 5K and I want to do the whole comparison of time thing.
You know, I love this part of my fitness. As long as I stay dedicated to working out and eating right, I will see nothing but constant improvement for at least a year. Barring illness and/or injury, there’s not really a lot of reason that I shouldn’t be able to improve my race times with each race. Except for, you know, something like the Apple Hill run and Bay to Breakers which are VERY hilly.
So, anyway. Chatted with Steve and got all motivated and such. Tonight I ended up running 4.25 miles tonight! That felt great! Gave me a lot more confidence in this training that I’ve shown on the schedule page (linked above). I am beginning to think that I really can do the 10K bit in November. I may not need to wait until the first to register, after all.
I am also loving the running, not just for the physical and mental benefits that I’d mentioned previously, but also for the inspiratioin it has been bringing lately.
Mondays are great. Jesse takes The Girlie to gymnastics and I go out for a run and come home and do a braindump of ideas that come through while running. I am able to get a good little chunk of time in before they get home and our evenings get a little more crazy.
So, yeah, 4.25 miles! I was only supposed to be doing 3.25 tonight. I was going to just do the treadmill, but made myself go outside, as it’s too easy to step off the treadmill and just be done. Outside, as far out as I go is as far back as I have to come.
So, I headed down to old town, which was somewhat of a mistake, as the hills just killed my time. They are always great to go down, obviously, but coming back up them was just killer. I walked parts of both of them on the way back home.
Also, I think part of my distance came from the fact that I was avoiding any other large hills on the way home. I tried to stick to the side streets that didn’t elevate as much as some of the major roads.
It felt good, though. I was zooming down a hill, and really, was just loving it. Tonight was the most peace I have ever felt while running. The weather was fantastic, there were obviously fireplaces going, as the smell of burning wood was in the air, I was getting tired, but not too exhausted, and I just couldn’t keep the smile off my face.
It was perfect. Can’t wait to get out there again.
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There’s a new notify list up, since I was getting a ton of spam on the other one. It’s at Google Groups and it’s call cratsnotify. I would link it, but I’m afraid of getting spam on it as well. Hopefully, you can find it that way, if you’re interested. If not, drop me a line and I’ll send you the direct link. Thanks.