The Perfect Run

It's a rare thing, but it does happen. No, really, it happened yesterday! My running partner sent me a text around 3:15 am that her little guy had been up for awhile and asked if we could run an hour later than planned. It just so happened that I got it while I was up feeding my little guy, and so I lost no sleep answering the text, but got an hour more than planned- sweet! When I got to where we were meeting to run, the sun was just getting to a good spot in the sky and the weather was runner's perfect (on the chilly side with little humidity).

We stretched a little and tried to keep warm while I strapped on all of the gear I'm trying to get  used to carrying. *Let me just tell you that a hydration belt is both convenient and inconvenient. It's nice to have freedom to go further away and pick a different route while still having all of your stuff (water bottle, energy chews, Powerade, ID, cell phone etc) in case you need it, but it sucks to carry all of that around with you, around your waist for hours on end. Plus it looks like a gigantic backwards fanny pack, and we all know how cool that is. And today my back is killing me because I didn't have it tight enough, and it bounced around the whole run because I didn't want to stop long enough to readjust it, and spilled a decent amount of my water down my backside. Anyway, the first couple of miles were a good warm up pace around a couple of neighborhood streets. It was great catching up with my friend who hasn't been able to run in a while because of her crazy work schedule, and to laugh and commiserate about baby sleeping schedules, and life as a mom. When she had run as far as she had planned to I decided to try an out and back that I've started a few times but had been to chicken to finish. Why? Well truthfully, it's because I'm a neighborhood runner. I'm used to running where there are people, and a few stop signs, and very little traffic. This out and back is on a great road, some hills, open road, a great view, and, a stop light. Laugh if you must, but it's a stop light at a decently busy intersection. I've only ever run through stop lights once before and it was two years ago WITH a friend. Not alone. It's a bit of five year old mentality maybe, but running through a stop light is intimidating. Will people see me, or will I get hit? Will I be aware enough of them?  And most importantly- Will I have to stop in the middle of my run and just stand there, waiting? Turns out that this stop light wasn't so bad, after all. It was a great run! It felt great to get out of the neighborhood routine of running loops and cul-de-sacs and stretch my legs. It felt great to just run and think about why I'm running, who I'm running for, and how exciting it is that I'm going to run an actual full marathon. It felt great to run negative splits all the way through, I got excited each time my Garmin would beep, and I'd look down and see a faster mile than the last, eventually running a minute and a half faster mile than the first. Side note: running on more rural roads can be interesting for a few reasons. One of them is all of the things you're likely to see. Yesterday I saw a HUGE snake that had, luckily, been run over before I saw it, a possum that may or may not have been dead (yes I ran in the middle of the road to stay far away from it), and a much more experienced looking runner going out as I was coming back (this was another "big girl" moment). I stopped at eight miles because I only ran six last week, and I was scared to over do it this week and then spent the rest of the day wishing I'd done at least two more miles...next week. Another thing that made it perfect was that I ran eight miles this week in the same time it took me to do six last week. :) It was the perfect run...