Call me Corrigan

It all started a few weeks ago. I went for a long run on a new route. I was going to meet the LW and Little Man for his soccer game. I wanted to do about 8 or 9 miles, but the field is only about 5 miles away. So I went to a convenient online mapping service, scouted out a route. Looked simple enough, and I ran it.

It started well, but I'd run most of the beginning of it in pieces before. The trouble came when I entered new territory. You see, it wasn't on roads, but trails. There are plenty of trails around here. Most of them are probably better described as forest roads, because they are so wide, they are however, closed to traffic which makes it a very attractive place to run.
But they're just not marked very well. So needless to say, I went a little astray. My 8-9 mile run turned into a 9.5 mile run. Not too bad. Except it was cold and rainy.

(And his game ended up getting canceled:

• Name at end of alphabet
• last call on roster
• didn't get the call before LW left the house
• Glad coach wasn't there, I'd have been bailing LW out of prison.)

Fast forward one week. I'm in North Carolina for a conference. I ran the first morning (it's great to be time zones ahead so you can wake up early and go for a run without the misery of waking up early.) It was a nice short one. No problems, just a little drizzle at the end. Over the course of the next two days I find a running route map outside one of the conference rooms. Eureka! It's perfect. I take a look that night and find a nice 6ish mile loop to run the next morning.

Great plan. 6ish mile loop. On trails. In the dark. In an area I've never run in before. Can you see where this is going? I think the best thing that can be said about that run is that I couldn't find the trails in the dark, therefore I didn't get miserably lost trying to follow them. My 6ish mile loop became a kinda 4ish mile loop with spokes shooting off it! Here's the loop, you just lose a bit of the frustrating "shoot, dead end!" aspects of it.

Fast forward to this morning. Not wanting to repeat my past mistake, I took a very close look at the route online. I saw where I'd gone wrong: I needed to take a left immediately after the house by the train tracks, last time I'd gone straight. So armed with that, and a list of the names of the three trails I needed to hit, I was off.

Yeah. Well little did I know, there were TWO left turns, only one of which was marked on any map, and you just couldn't see the other on any overhead imagery I could find. (Anyone think of asking Google if they could do a winter global overlay? No pesky trees to block trails.)

So needless to say. I got to do a bit more exploring. Due to my natural sense of direction (LW suppress that snicker), I found my way back to the main cobblestone trail and finished up. Nine miler becomes 11 miler. But....I didn't miss the Little Man's soccer game, or my name would be Mudd.

The good thing is, I've found quite a few neat paths through the woods, and with the summer coming it will be just lovely to explore some more.

Kit notice:
I bought an Amphipod Hydration belt online. I figured with running longer distances in the summer weather I'd need something more than the single 20 ounce Ultimate Direction bottle I had. (I'd gotten that one free a couple of summers ago in Hawai'i when the Ultimate Direction sales rep was in the shop when I went in to buy some new shoes). I really liked the bottle in the Ultimate Direction set up, but holding it in my hand just got a little annoying. So I bought the belt and ran with it this morning. It was great. I was worried about bounce, but there was none. I had to do a little tweaking with bottle position, but luckily that's not too hard. Over all very satisfied after one run. We'll see how it goes as the summer progresses.

Hmmm

I have a couple of routes I rotate through at lunch. But most of them pass by a small parking lot near some foot paths through the woods. Frequently (usually more than once a week) there are the same two cars parked there. Standing between the two cars are the same too people: one man, one woman probably about 40 years old or so. They are usually in some degree of embrace. I'm not sure what they're up to.....

PT Test

Friday morning was the dreaded Navy Fitness test (The Physical Readiness Test or PRT). I can imagine what you may be thinking: "Navy? Fitness? Give me a minute here, I need to stop laughing..." Seriously, it is far harder than you think to climb 4 ladders with a cup of coffee a donut and a lit cigarette without dropping / spilling / extinguishing any of them.


Okay, so maybe that's not it. The Navy test is (I'm ashamed to say) very similar to the Air Force test, and shorter than the Army or Marine Corps tests. It's just push-ups, curl-ups and a run. There is also the "sit and reach." Sit on your rear and touch your toes with your legs straight. The sit and reach is obviously the most important, because if you can't touch your toes you get some gentle encouragement to try harder next time.

Anyway we did the run, 1.5 miles on an out and back course. This was the first PRT I've run in
Stuttgart, and it's the first organized one I've run since leaving the U.S. in 2004 so I was a little unsure of how the run would go. After doing less than stellar on the push-ups and sit-ups I took a look at the numbers to figure out how fast I needed to run. Based on what I saw, I needed 11 minutes.

So after a short walk to the start line, and wait for "the turn around guy" to make it out to the turn around, we were off. There were about 20 of us.

We started off and it felt awful. Legs of cement, lungs of mush. I managed to stay near the front of the "pack" to about the 1/3 mile point or so and I started feeling a little better. I was using the "try to stay up with the guy in front of you" method.

We got to the turn around, and "turn-around-guy" says "5:08." "Drat" says I (or something similar). I've got to pick up 30 seconds or so on the return leg! So I shifted to the "try to pass the guy in front of you" method. Well, I managed to quickly pass the guy I had been keeping pace with leading up to the turn around, and started closing in on another guy. And as I do so I think. "Wait a minute here, I was 30 seconds AHEAD of my pace at the turn around!" (yeah, brilliant for the guy who does mental gym while running...).

To keep this overly long story from growing any longer, I finished in 10:15, which was my fastest time since I was a Midshipman. It also meant I ran a slightly negative split (by a second). It also means I was aided by the down hill return leg!

New Shoes

Yes. The old ones were dead. 270+ miles (so even at ridiculous UK prices my shoes ended up costing just under $0.50 per mile).
I strapped on my new shoes for a nice muddy run today.

Holy cow. I had a new spring in my step. So, now my nagging achey hip needs to go away, and all will be good with the world.

(Of course, the lovely and supportive wife calls it "oldgeezeritis")

M-1R

Yes, it's been a month. I have a job. I have been running, but not blogging.

I've had a recurring problem on my runs lately. If I were driving I'd call it highway hypnotism. Twice in the past three weeks, while out on my Saturday morning long run I've found myself so engrossed in thought that I missed my turn. Seriously, my mind was so consumed with important thoughts that I ran right past where I needed to turn (the same place twice).

Here's the thing. I have no idea what I was thinking about. Even as it dawned on my I wasn't where I needed to be, you could have offered me $1,000 and I couldn't tell you what had distracted me. Must have been interesting though.

So here's a question, when you're out running, away from people what do you think about? My mind tends to wander to strange things:
-Children's television theme songs
-Mental gymnastics
-Conjugating French verbs.

*Bonus points to anyone beside Kevin who can decipher the title.