A Quick Visit to the Road

Tuesday, speed training on the treadmill again.  Why?  Not the speed training, but why the dreaded treadmill?  Well, I’m at the gym anyway and this saves time.  But more importantly, when I set the pace on the machine I HAVE TO run it.  I did hook the safety cord on this time, so hopefully I wouldn’t fly off that thing.  I didn’t fly off.  And I increased the pace on my bursts.

Wednesday (today), I spent my trail running time test driving used cars.  Yuk.  Yuk.  Yuk.  This of course did not make me happy.  Especially since I do not yet have a car.  And then weekday afternoons are impossible for trails since I have boys to pick up, dinner to cook, etc.  Eventually, my spirits low, low, low, so low I finally decided I really needed to get in a run.

Yes wonderful readers, just about a half hour before dark, I scrambled around searching the haphazard collection of running shoes beneath my bed for a pair of road shoes.  I found one with no match.  And then aha!  I found two that I was wise enough to tie the laces together. Wearing a white shirt and shorts with reflector dots on them, I put a smile on my face and hit the road. 

My feet felt like they glided along the road.  It is so FLAT.    I don’t mean flat as in no hills.  Even the hills were flat.  It’s a strange sensation to run with no rocks or ruts beneath my feet, no switchbacks, no tree roots. 

One thing I had forgotten about road running are waiting for “walk” lights.  I believe I must have waited FIVE minutes before I could cross at a busy intersection.  All so that I could run up this:

And run across this, over a busy highway (yes I am very easily amused):

And when the sunlight disappeared fully, I delighted, as I always have, in the lights that reflected on the ocean water.  And I relished the cool ocean breeze against my skin.  And I forgot all about looking for a car.

Tuesday’s miles:  2.0

Wednesday’s miles: 7.23