3.5 miles at the river at 10:30am. Average pace=8:56/m. Then 3.5 miles around my neighborhood at 11:20am. Average pace=9:28/m. Weather=79F, 56% humidity, 63 dew point, 28mph wind, sunny.
I went to Trinity river to run today and I discovered that the park area is closed because they are getting ready for Mayfest. The parking lot by my running store was unusually empty because of it. I went ahead and parked and started out on the trail in the opposite direction as the park which was still open. I immediately noticed that there were way fewer people out today than usual. There was also an abnormally high number of homeless people today. I started feeling a little uneasy about going this direction all by myself. This direction goes off into secluded trails. Normally there are so many people out, I don't feel strange about it. The plan was to do 10 today but I decided to cut it short. I only ended up with 3.5 miles.
So I drove back to my house to run some more. This is just not my day though. I started out running and a gust of wind blew me off the sidewalk. There was a 3 inch drop to the grass below on this section so as I came off the sidewalk I started feeling my ankle roll. In order to prevent breaking my ankle, I just fell to the ground instead. I landed on my hands and knees exactly where I still have scabs from my fall at the race on Saturday. Uh, ouch! I was like are you serious?! Again! In less than a week?! Now my hands are bleeding again... Great.
I was near my house so I considered going home and forgetting about running more today but decided to press on. I had intended to run 6.5 around the neighborhood to make my 10 for the day. Once again I ended up cutting the run short because I was dying of thirst and getting a headache. Running against 30mph wind up hills was starting to wear on my nerves.
At one point I was running up a hill and a squirrel that was startled by me coming toward it started running into the street just as two cars were coming down the hill FAST. I stopped and pointed to the squirrel so the cars would see it. I just knew that squirrel was going to get run over! The squirrel ran about 2/3 across the street and got spoked by the car and started to run back. The car literally went over the squirrel but the tires missed running him over by like 1/2 an inch! Then the squirrel is coming back across the street right in front of the second car. The second car put on the brakes and once again missed the squirrel by about maybe an inch. The squirrel ran back on the sidewalk past me and up a tree. Whew!
I know it was a squirrel but it freaked me out. I would have felt so bad had it gotten run over. I had all this adreline but not in a good way. I started running again up that stupid hill against the 30mph wind with the sun beating down. Yeah, by this point I was just ready to be done today. This was just not my day. |