dedication, perseverance, self-discipline

5 miles in 39:36.

This was my last run in Iowa before moving.  It is bittersweet leaving Iowa, as I leave with many good and bad memories of my time here.  Additionally, while I look forward to what the future might bring I can't say that I am all that excited for the present, as moving without a permanent home to live in, without a job, and without having finished my degree does not lend itself to great amounts of optimism.  But, I do have faith that in time everything will work out.  Trying to be patient.

Planned day of no running today.  After loading the truck yesterday, we drove until 11pm last night, and camped at a reservoir in Nebraska.  Today we woke up at 6 am, and drove to Utah.  Due to the frequent stops associated with driving with a newborn we did not arrive in Alpine until after 11 pm.  We finished unloading the truck at 2:30 am, and went to bed at 3 am.

I was originally planning on running after arriving in Prescott, AZ this afternoon, but traveling was slow enough that I decided yesterday to take another day off today.  After going to bed at 3 am last night, we woke up at 8 am this morning.  We then packed up our car, returned the moving truck, and drove to AZ.  We finally arrived in Prescott at 10 pm at night.

We will be staying here for the next few weeks as I try and find a job and a place to live in Utah.  We also need to wait for the courts in NV to give my step daughter approval to move to Utah since her father (who is living in Iraq) has refused to grant us approval to move because he wants to be "rewarded" if he grants us permission to move to Utah (he has stated that he wants to never be required to pay child support ever again... while he is currently over 12 months deficient despite only being required to pay $250 per month currently).

Running time of 43:38.  Watch claimed distance of 5.55 miles.  I will estimate that the distance was 5.7 miles as the watch always measures short.

I had my first run in Prescott today.  I have run here previously, but never for more than 2 miles.  I can surmise running in Prescott in one word... hilly.  According to my watch I had about 600 feet of elevation gain during the run.  I probably pushed myself more than I should have considering I am not used to the elevation, nor am I used to the hills.

Running time of 45:45.  Watch measured distance at 5.67, which I will estimate at 5.8 miles due to watch innacuracy.  Once I find a route that I like I will measure it with the course tool so that I have a more accurate measure of how far I am running.

This run was hillier than yesterdays, as I had almost 700 feet of elevation gain during the run.  The biggest hill started just over a mile into the run, and gained almost 250 ft of elevation over the course of a little over 0.6 miles (maybe 0.65?).  I did a better job today at not pushing myself too hard up (and down) the hills.

Total time of 1:14:09.  I got lost.  The watch claimed a distance of 9.49 miles, so I will estimate the run to be 9.65 miles.  Edit:  I was curious enough about the distance that I mapped it out on the course tool, and it ended up measuring at about 9.67-9.68, so my estimation was almost right on.  As I prefer to round my run distances I will just leave it at 9.65.

I had looked at a map breifly before I left to go running, and unfortunately I forgot the name of one of the streets I needed to turn on, and I went in the wrong direction for a while.  I eventually figured out where I was at, and started heading back home, however the run ended up much longer than I had planned (6 miles planned).  To top it off, I had been heading downhill while running the wrong way, which meant I had to head back uphill again to get home.  I gained about 400 ft net elevation from 6-8 miles going from about 5200 ft to 5600 ft.  There were a few short downhill stretches during that two mile segment, so I actually had more climbing than just the 400 ft elevation change.  I had over 1000 ft total elevation gain during the run.  Over the last few miles I was running pretty slow because I was trying to not push myself too much, as I have not finished a run this long at least since early 2014, and maybe since mid 2013.  My legs felt pretty tired at the end of the run.