Running for Schroeder

Ok, so it has been a while since I posted. I am almost sure I ran some time between the last post and now, but I can’t honestly say. This month has been hectic at work and then I got a cold which can always get much worse for me, given my sinuses and allergies. Then lately, Schroeder has been sick and the time I am at home has been taken up helping with him. So anyway, I got up this morning at 2:00 (email from Beijing, asking about some dev work that must be finished before they all go on a week long holiday) and ended up not going back to bed. At around 5:00 I decided I needed to run. I had already used the car to measured off a 4.3-4.4 stretch (from here) down Dessau Rd and I thought it would be a great way to get started back. I knew it would be a tough one, but what the heck, nothing ventured..nothing ventured? Anyway, at 5:45 I left the house with my cool new REI water bottle and without my iPod Nano. My thinking was, that I needed to change to songs anyway (it currently is filled with tech podcasts), so why bother this morning. So off I go. Dessau is a big divided 4 lane road with a 50mph speed limit and limited sidewalks, so I mainly stuck to the median. I had run a 3.3+ down it earlier so I new it was ok, just not great. Well, at 5:45 in the morning, it is dark. Very dark. There are street lights every so often, but there are great big dark sections. Also, they hadn’t mowed some sections in over a month and the grass/sage/plant growth was waist high. It is sparse, but still a pain to run in. On the outward leg I ran my 3.3 in 37 minutes and got to the turn around at 55. The dew had soaked my shoes (and legs) and one had loostened enough to start a blister. I ran under a (smallish) tree and through a giant spider web that literally pulled off my glasses when I yanked it from my face. The last mile+ was nasty hard and I had already about decided to call it a day at the turn around. But, after just a little bit of walking, I decided that I would crank up the old interval timer on my watch and see if I could run at least some of the way back. I set it for 2/2 and started off. Traffic was picking up so I couldn’t safely cheat the grass by running in the road very much at all. I noticed that my legs were almost black with grass seeds and other assorted junk that stuck from the growth I was now running/walking through. The interval running was awesome. I was able to pick up my running pace and still walk at a brisk pace during the not running time. My overall time was 1:58.27 so my run/walk back wasn’t too much slower than my run out. When I mapped out my route on Local.Live.Com it lists it at 4.63 miles, so I may have run 9+ instead of 8+. In fact, Maps.Google.Com also measures it at 4.63. I will have to try again with the car and see if I just misread the milage.

However far it was, it isn’t a route I will be running again until they mow the grass. I believe I am going to follow Bo’s good example and get a gym membership and spend my lunch hour working out. They even have a gym in the building I work in, so I really don’t have any excuse.