Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Nov. 18: Oh yeah...this is a running blog

Although it is only Tuesday, this is a great week! For starters, when I rolled out of bed on Monday morning and looked out my window I was greeted with this sunrise over the Sacre Coeur:



And on Thursday and Friday I am off work to attend Cultural Training! Ok, to be honest I am not sure what I would rather do...work or attend the training. But I am pretty sure that I will have a steady supply of croissants and pain au chocolats to keep me entertained...we shall see!

And to make this week even better, I have actually been running again lately (hence the title of this blog)! I ran 6 miles on Sunday night with Jennie at ~ 9 minute/mile pace.

Yesterday I was leaving work to catch the metro only to discover that the metro was on strike and that all of Paris seemed to be jammed into the metro station trying to catch the 1 train that was running every 20 minutes. "No problem," I thought - like any well planned runner I have a pair of running shoes, shorts, shirt, and clean socks in my office, "I can just run home." And run home I did and it was a BLAST!! It has been a while since I have done serious urban adventure running - I usually avoid it due to the threat of injury or the fact that my legs are just too brittle from extensive training to do some of the maneuvering required to jump obstacles, side step people, and hang fakies when blasting over 5-6 stairs at a time! But yesterday I was just a running fool...now I just need to perfect the army roll while running mid-stride - that would look so cool to do randomly infront of a group of people and just keep running without breaking stride afterwards!!

Today I ran 6 miles in what I believe the Kenyan Way people would call a "progressive run." I had no intention of doing this but once my feet hit the pavement I just let them make the decisions for me. This was not an easy run, nor was it an overly hard run, but it was a GREAT run! It went as follows:
7:30, 7:13, 7:04, 6:39, 5:52, 5:43 min/mile

I have had to restructure my running route to follow alongside lit roads now since it is dusky by 4:45pm and dark by 5:00pm. Since I do not start running until 7:30-8:00pm, I run in search of light! My usual running routes are a little too dark and I believe are used for extracurricular tranny activities during this time of year (2 sightings tonight). My new 6 mile running route is below - it just pains me to see all those beautiful pathways inbetween that I will not be able to run along until next spring sometime!



Speaking of running in darker conditions though - does anyone notice how super dilated their eyes get when coming in from a, generally, dark run. It is obvious why...but after my run today my pupils were huge - I scared myself when I looked into the mirror!

Tomorrow is pilates...going to get my stretch on...sucre!
A+

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