What a Thanksgiving weekend. I can't remember that last time I had four full days off for the Thanksgiving weekend, for that I am thankful.
On Thanksgiving I had the pleasure of running a 10K race in Mesa in the morning which for me is fun. My sister also ran the race which was awesome, her first race ever and she did great. The rest of the day was filled with food and family and was quite nice. That night I went over to Wal-Mart to experience a piece of Black Friday. I felt like one of those guys that goes outside to see a hurricane. I felt like I would have been safer somewhere else but watching the chaos was both exciting and scary.
Today my running schedule had me run a 20 miler. Now I don't have a fancy GPS watch that will tell me how far I have gone, what my pace is, and all that other stuff that would be great to know. I go old school. I map out my route using either Dailymile.com or Runnersworld.com (I guess that part isn't old school), then I head out with my stop watch. For most of my regular routes, I know where the mile marks are so I can figure my pace, but for my long runs it is more difficult. This weeks long run had me run along the canal for nearly 10 miles then loop around a neighborhood before heading back. I knew where most my mile marks were but not all.
As I reached my turn around point I had trouble remembering which street it was that I was suppose to loop around. I thought I had it but when the street didn't go the way I thought it was suppose to, I turned around and heading back. My problem then became, did I run too far or too little? As I approached what I knew was suppose to be mile 14, I realized I was behind my pace. I didn't know if it was because I went too far, or if I was just running too slow, so I did what anyone would do, I sped up. As I approached what I knew should have been mile 16, I was back to my goal pace and I kept it up from there. I actually finished a couple of minutes ahead of my goal pace but it was a struggle.
When I got home I looked at my route and realized I had gone further than I was suppose to. I mapped the route I took and discovered that instead of running 20 miles, I ran 20.65 miles, and at a pretty darn good pace. I have another 20 miler scheduled in a few weeks, next time I will not forget where to turn around.
I don't want this post to be too long but there is something I came across in my reading this week that I have been meaning to write about. I think I will add it in a seperate post. The more I try to figure it out the more complicated it becomes.
Today as I was running I was thinking about some of the pain that I have been feeling in my life. It was a beautiful morning and the more I thought, the more I wanted to run. Then the thought came to me...Am I running away from something, or am I running towards something? I don't know for sure, I just know I am running, and I know if makes me happy.
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