BIg Run!!!

I ran four miles on March 19th in 40 min 15 sec. Over 10 min per mile. I have put this run behind me and looked to run a longer distance.
    It all started out innocently enough. My wife, Julie, was going to meet some ladies for cross-stitch night. It made sense to me that it would be held at the cross-stitch shop. She might have mentioned otherwise, I’m not sure. Anyway I decided to run to the shop and get some water while I was there and come back home in the walk/run mode. I didn’t know the distance to the cross-stitch shop. I have started doing a little stretching before running (there is a link to a good short stretch in the related links area on this page) Do it, if you don’t already. It makes a big difference in how comfortable you run and recover. So, I was thinking about running to the store where the ladies were meeting. I could water up and go back home with a full bottle of water. I stretched and then ran from my house on Lake Ave. with a goal of running to the cross-stitch shop in Belvedere. I was feeling good at the beginning of the run (I had just stretched out). It’s uphill to start out with and goes more uphill the further I run. The first mile is mostly uphill. Gravity seems to have personal grudge against me. I’ve never done anything to gravity that I know of. #ell, I don’t even know how it works. I only know that it works… I only know it works against me. By the time I get to Martintowne Rd. I am sucking air like a Dyson vacuum on high. It finally gets flatter (is that a even a real word). After I run down Martintowne Rd. to Butler Ave. I will have recovered some only to be faced with a relatively short but steep uphill section of Butler Ave. So, more sucking for me. I’m sure my lungs have a pretty, yellow pollen lining by now. A too quick downhill follows to Georgia Ave. where I take a left and run down Georgia Ave. to the cross-stitch shop. There is a gradual uphill from Butler to Posey’s Funeral Home and then a long , thank God, downhill section to E. Marion Ave. Gravity will now take over holding me by the back of my shorts all the way up the next uphill. After having fun, dragging behind me by my shorts up hill, gravity seems to have felt guilty so it pulled me down to W. Five Notch Rd. Then with a Nelson Muntz Ha! Ha! (Simpsons reference: see link this page) I feel like I’m being pulled backwards as I try to “run” up to Edgefield Rd. Then I make a left onto Edgefeild Rd. The fun part of running on Edgefield Rd. is in the running surface, a combination of sidewalks, trails, ruts, holes, highway, car parts, litter and verbal abuse with a dash of blowing horn. You get that even if you’re running on the trail that runs along some of the road and is 10 feet from the road! After running the gauntlet that is Edgefield Rd. to the cross-stitch shop I find out that my wife might have mentioned something about where they were meeting because it wasn’t at the cross-stitch shop. There was no one there. More importantly there was no water. I was running at night so most places weren’t open. I called her cell phone. The one we pay for every month. Shockingly, there was no answer. There was no answer at the paid-for home phone either. So, I had to run back home. It was the same run, only backwards. I felt OK for the first few steps and then different parts of me started to rebel from all of the uneven surfaces. After I got back to a relatively even surface it seemed like I hit a gear that allowed me to run smoothly and painlessly without all the oxygen hogging I usually do. I like that gear and hope to get in that gear again some day. I got home alive and walked the dog right away to cool off. In the end, I ran 6.6 miles (half of the distance I need to run in the Augusta Ironman 70.3). It took me 1 hr and 13 min. That’s 11 min 6 sec per mile. I know I still have work to do to lower my times. I weighed in yesterday for Team Lean, the weight loss program the YWCA has going on, and I came in at 206.6 pounds. I have lost 11 pounds. I still have to lose 21.6 pounds to reach my goal of 185 pounds by September 27th. I’m finally starting to see improvement and that makes me want more. I will see you running on the road today.

Ps. the ladies were at Belvedere First Baptist Church a 1/4 mile past the cross-stitch shop. Oh well.