Fritos, Tickets, and Other Non-Sequiturs

I’ve been busy this week and haven’t updated my blog in several days.  But I haven’t stopped running!! 🙂

Thursday morning, I got back into my usual routine and was up at 5:40am to get a 2-mile run in before work.  I ran really hard, but unfortunately, my run did not turn out to be as awesome as I thought it would be.

What is up with that first split?! I swear, I came out of the gate pushing myself really hard, so to see that makes me go…WTH!? And yet, my second mile was pretty flippin’ awesome (for me!).  A 9:15 mile?  That’s the fastest I’ve ever run!  My overall pace wasn’t my fastest, but I guess I can be happy about the last mile.  🙂

Thursday at work, I had an interesting experience. On my way into the kitchen, I saw someone sitting at a table in the lunchroom, eating a small bag of Fritos.  Now, I have always loved Fritos; I may or may not have been able to eat an entire (large) bag by myself in a day at one point in my life.   But when I saw them on Thursday, my first thought was, “I’m so glad I’m not eating Fritos; there’s nothing good in them.”  And then I went in search of a banana.

Who was that crazy girl?! 😛  It was only later that I realized the significance of the thought process—good God, I’m starting to actually want to eat healthier!  So, yay for mind shifts.

This morning I got up at 5am for another run.  I have been debating on what my next race will be.  My sister found one that is fairly close to me, and I have the option to do a 5k or a 10k.  I have been waffling back and forth on which one to do.  This morning, I decided to do four miles with the intent to go faster than what I’ve been averaging on my long runs, to see how it feels and just how fast I might be able to go.

While it is sometimes a struggle to drag myself out of bed at 5am, I do love being up that early.  When I looked outside at the darkness, I saw this.

I wish I was better at taking pictures at night, because this shot doesn’t do justice to how awesome the moon looked with the Jupiter and Venus underneath it.  I had to go look up what exactly I was seeing (thanks to my freshman year astronomy class in college, I at least knew they were both planets!), and I was pretty geeked to know I had been up early enough to get a picture of those two planets.  🙂

I got to the park at 6am, and that was pretty awesome.  I love being out with the owls (literally!) and getting sunrise shots.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to read my bible before heading out to do my planned 4 mile course.  “Planned,” of course, being the operative word.  😉

Right after I started out, I was astonished to see 2 deer in the clearing just past the bridge.  They were so beautiful, and it was such a peaceful, serene scene, with the sun rising behind them, I knew that I had to break through my “never stop at all costs!” motto to stop and take a picture with my phone.  Ha! What a lot of good that did me.  Can you see them??

Look really hard in the blue circles—they’re there. 😛  The shot sucks, but the moment in my head is priceless. 🙂

So, that cut into my pace, but that’s okay.  A bigger issue arose when I took a wrong turn—again!  Argh.  And I like to think I have a good sense of direction!  I ended up going way out of my way and found my way back almost by accident.  After that, the run was pretty good, through a wooded area.  I ended up seeing FIVE more deer! Crazy!

On the way back, I dropped my towel on the trail in the wooded area, but by that time, I had a good pace going and didn’t want to mess it up.  Next time, I will just turn around and pick it up. More on that later…

Because I ended up going out of my way, my 4 mile run left me still a ways from my car.  I stopped right at four miles to walk, because I needed the break.  But then I decided it was pointless to walk all the way back to my car, especially since I was thirsty and wanted my water.  So, after about 200 feet, I began to run again.  I started a new session on my Garmin, though, just to keep my four-miler intact. When it was all done, I was actually quite pleased:

That last mile was sub-10! (Yes, by 1 second. Shut up, it counts!!) And my half-mile at the end, even though I was tired, was good!

This made me feel very good about my running, and I have decided that I’m going to do the 10k next month, and I’m going to try to PR.   Woo hoo!

Now, about that towel. The spot where I dropped it was pretty far into the wooded area, with no official parking close by.  However, there was a spot I could [illegally] park on the side of the road and walk down an “authorized vehicle only” dirt road to get to it pretty easily. So that’s what I did.  I’ve done this “questionable parking” plenty of times while taking pictures, so I wasn’t too concerned.  After picking up my towel, I turned the corner from the trail back to the park-vehicle-only  road , and guess what I saw?  Sure enough, a park police vehicle, parked oh-so-close to my car.  Damn.

I figured in these situations, it’s best to be forthright, so when I got to the police vehicle, I walked right up to the driver’s side.  I could see the officer sitting there with the clipboard and ticket form in front of him. {gulp} I greeted him and immediately apologized for parking illegally.  Then I sheepishly held up my towel and said, “I had to get my towel!”

To my surprise, he actually smiled a little. He was an older man, and he seemed to be pretty kindly.  “Well, I did see that towel on the road when I was going down that way.”

“Yeah, it was mine—I’m sorry I parked here, but I didn’t want to walk two miles to get back to it!”

He smiled again and said, “Okay.  Don’t do it again, though.” Then he put away his clipboard, told me to have a nice day, and drove away.

So, the moral of the story is—pick up the towel!  But, if you don’t, being nice and looking really tired might work, too.  🙂

Thanks for reading!