Spring--it's not just a rumor!

I sat sun-kissed on the patio this afternoon, writing thank-you notes and e-mails to everyone I could who helped with the dog agility fundraiser last month, and felt grateful to know so many wonderful, kind, generous human beings. I am lucky.

Taking this shot yesterday is one reason why I didn't get around to making an entry. One of those guys who goes door-to-door trying to get people to change natural gas suppliers was at the house where I took this picture, and he followed me all the way home and blathered at me until I signed his stupid agreement just to make him go away. I wasted half an hour last night and another half-hour this morning promptly undoing it.

Running also proved to be an extraordinary challenge yesterday. I had 6 miles on the schedule, and my plan was to do Liz's Loop (as I now think of it) twice. It's 3.1 miles around each time, so you end up with a 10K and a rest stop at the midpoint. Pretty perfect--or it would have been if there had been any parking meters available. Noooooo! I didn't get to the meter area until a little after 11:00. You can pretty much forget snagging one of these spots after 9:00 on a weekday, but I didn't think of that until it was too late.

My next thought was to drive out to a section of the rail trail and do segments back and forth, orbiting my car the way the Earth orbits the sun, but nooooooooo! They've just started rebuilding the bridge on the main road to get there. I also didn't remember that until I was on top of it. Grrrrrrr!

I dithered a bit before deciding I would thread my way around the closed bridge and get to the rail trail a different way, but then inspiration finally whapped me upside the head. I entered a 5K race last October close to my home, and I could just run that course! I knew the path well and I knew it was exactly 5K, so I could just run it twice. It was a loop course, so I would get my nice midpoint stop. Yay, my brain finally came up with something useful!

The funny thing is that the 5K course starts and ends at my gym, so I'd be parking in their parking lot even though I had no intention of going inside--not when it was nearly 60 degrees and sunny.

Thrilled to finally have a workable plan, I drove to the gym, parked the car, took one last swig of water, and even found the start line from the race still painted across the road. I finally launched into my run just before noon, nearly an hour after I left home.

The good news was that I didn't feel like I was working as hard as I did during the race, which was 5 months ago. I kept an easier pace than I did then, since I certainly wasn't racing, but the sun started to feel warm and I wished I'd worn shorts instead of capri-length tights after the first mile. I hit the 2.5 K halfway marker at exactly 16:00 (I raced it in 15:00 flat) and finished the 5K in exactly 32:00 (race time was 30:03). Talk about even! The second half has some pretty good uphill action, although the hills aren't all that steep.

The bad news was that the Elvis bagel I had eaten at about 10:00 was down to fumes by mile 2 and my stomach started growling. I hate that feeling that you're running out of fuel and your stomach is turning into a gaping void of emptiness. It certainly doesn't help your running, either. I was suffering almost as much as I was during the race by the time I hit the 5K finish line.

I stopped my watch and tore into the Clif Shot Bloks I had brought for mid-run fueling. I could tell I really needed them because they tasted better than they did last time. They are just too time-consuming, though--I timed it, and it took 3 minutes for me to chew and swallow 3 blocks (equal to 100 calories, which is about what you get from one gel) with water and get enough of the residue off my teeth that it wasn't distracting.

Somewhere during that torturous mile 3, I had another epiphany (two in one day! I know!). Since Liz's Loop is just that--a loop--you should be able to begin from any point on the loop and still cover 3.1 miles if you run all the way back around to the same point, right? And it just so happens that the gym is on Liz's Loop. So instead of running my 5K course AGAIN (bo-ring!), I could do Liz's Loop for my second 5K. Cool, no?

I pushed off for the second 5K adventure listening closely to my gut for signs of unhappiness with the shot bloks I'd just downed. My stomach did hurt briefly about half a mile in, but then everything settled and I was fine. I felt a definite perk-up and relief that I was not going to "bonk" completely (i.e., that feeling that you have to stop and fall down because you're totally out of fuel/energy). Just coming close to it as I did in the first 5K is a pretty nasty feeling.

The only problem with tackling Liz's Loop from this novel starting point was that The Giant Hill (scroll down for pictures of it) came at about Mile 5 instead of Mile 1. Believe me, those 4 miles make a big difference. I managed to run the first and second parts of it, but the really super-steep part just did me in. I had to walk for about 90 seconds. However, there was almost no uphill running after that at all, so the last mile felt pretty good. I arrived back at my car expecting my second 5K to be much slower than my first, but surprise--despite walking up the hill, I still ran miles 4-6 in 31:53! This gave me a total time of 1:03:53 for the 10K, which works out to a 10:17 pace per mile, equal to my pace at last weekend's five-mile race! To be fair, I should mention that I stopped for about five minutes at the midpoint, and that I stopped and started the watch at stoplights three times. I just didn't feel like stressing out about the stoplights. So I got a few extra mini-rest breaks in there.

Tonight, my husband and I are off to my teammate Lindsey's fundraiser! She and Angela and Carie are teaming up to do a Scotch Doubles bowling fundraiser. It sounds like a ton of fun!