Patience; the new endurance sport.

3- Miles

After the race Amanda says, I'll see you Monday morning.  To which I replied, let's talk about that tommorrow.  I suspected she'd be stiff.  But Sunday came and she wanted to run 3 on monday.  So there we were 6:20 a.m. on a still, perfect, spring morning.  We were the only ones on the trail but Sasha.  He looked sore, but still running fast as always.

4 miles

We ran so slow.  I enjoyed every second of it.  Amanda said she was exausted.  I reminded her that I thought resting post race was a good idea.  We'll see if she wants to run tommorrow.  I think we both want to run together as many days as we can before they move.  Then we'll be down to just long Saturday runs together. 

4 miles 8:40 pace.

Wow, today was windy.  Trees and branches blown all over the trail.  It was like an obstacle course.  Good for resistance training right?    I love the added challenge of weather or running on packed ice.  Anyone can run on a nice day.  Only a few weeks left to run with Amanda.  I assume she'll be taking Derek's Garmin with her when she goes....  Until I ran with her, I never paced myself or knew exactly how far I ran.  I'd gauge my run on time.  Do I need a Garmin?  Hmm.

8:37 pace

Maybe it's just me, but 45 degrees and no wind is PERFECT running weather.  I could run like this forever.  I wish I had four extra hours and a marathon to run today.   The air is cool enough, but allows your lungs to use the oxygen it delivers.  I love the solitude of winter running, but man it's hard to get a good breath in sub 25 weather. So, now I'm starting to look for other women who run the trail at the same time I do. I find my self calculating their speed and overall sturdiness.  I start wondering if they are a 2-3 miler "I'm trying to keep my weight down even when I don't eat actual food" or a consistent (even in the dead of winter) 4-6 daily and 12-23 on Saturday’s "give me a freaking steak" kind of girl.  Maybe I should wear a "Runner for Rent" sign advertising "easy 9 minute miles and able to go the distance."  Pretty soon Catherine will come out of post-baby fog ready to rock-n-roll.  But for the next few weeks, I may be blogging a lot about how I can't figure out how to use the Garmin.  (Note for Sarah: At least that nagging little beep will keep me company!).

9:10 pace

A number of things went very wrong for me yesterday late into the afternoon.....embarrassing and horrible things that I did in a state of exhaustion that I will not mention here and hope to never be reminded of.  So sleeping was not restful.  I haven’t run a Friday in a long while (usually resting/stretching/cross training before a long Saturday run).  But I'm sort of in between gigs right now and needed to cleanse my palette from yesterday with a dose of running outdoors in perfect weather.  It was my goal to search for the 1/4 mile markers that Sasha told me about (in reference to the question: Should I get a Garmin? To which he replied that I do not because there are markers on the trail at every 1/4 mile).  ANYWAY, it was kind of him to believe that one could count in 4's, add, and then divide whilst running.  I am committed to the beauty of running distance which for me is: allowing my mind and eyes wander.  Looking for the "magic triangles" (as Sasha put it) every quarter mile, made me dizzy.  Anyway, I'm sure I'll be fine up to 6 miles without a Garmin for a while.  It's those longer runs later in the summer when I really can't tell the difference between 17 and 20.  I forget how to add and divide somwhere around mile 12.  Who am I kidding?  I can't add o divide right ever.

The real reason I had to start blogging is because no one believes the crazy stuff that happens to me while I'm running.  It was a fantastic morning, easy beautiful countryside running.  At mile 11 in the middle of cow and horse country, sitting in the middle of the trail was a small, blue parakeet. The kind people keep as pets in cages. I yelled at the dogs to keep away, and bent down to look at it.  It looked lethargic.  I picked it up every so gently, and then it bit me, twice on the thumb with its razor sharp little beak. In surprise, I sort of dropped/threw the bird, which flew right into the mouth of my golden retriever, who ran off down the trail with white wing tips hanging out of either side of her mouth.  I ran after her, yelling for to let go of the bird, when I noticed my thumb was bleeding in rivulets down my arm.  Panic stricken (and daughter of a health inspector) I remembered how birds, next to insects, are the largest carriers of the kind of crazy microorganisms and bacterium that spread into deadly epidemics such as the Spanish Flu that killed 20 million people in 1918.  So I start down the riverbank in an effort to plunge my hand into the water and wash away the epidemic I'm about to start because of my carelessness.  As I'm inching my way down the bank, I step right onto a snake, which is making a noise like a rattlesnake.  From that very spot in the middle of the riverbank, I DIVE into the river--clothes, shoes and all.  It was a shockingly cold.  Still panic stricken, I'm not sure if I should make my way back to the bank, I feel hypothermia becoming a very real possibility and make it back to the trail dripping and sloshing the all the way back home. D+@#! parakeet.  If that was your parakeet, I'm very sorry.