Sunday Long Run, 3/25/2018

It is Palm Sunday, so there is no way that I could skip church, today. I had 17 on the schedule and to get that in before church required an early wake-up. I ate a grill cheese sandwich, had some coffee and got out the house pretty quickly.

It was cold and on the first leg of the run. Somehow, I managed to get myself stuck behind orange do not enter tape. I won't say any more about that. I stopped at home to use the restroom, change to a short sleeve short, pick up my handheld and have a scoop of Ucan. I was home a lot longer than I would have liked,but I was moving as fast as possible. I wore a short sleeve, shorts and gloves for the rest of the run.  I assumed that I would take the gloves off eventually, but I didn't take the gloves off until I was about 1/2 mile from home.

There weren't a lot of people out, but weird things happened. At about 8:30 in the morning, as I'm running, I smell the strong and undeniable odor of marijuana. People are in front of their house, hanging out, smoking weed. Did they even eat breakfast? I was running through a nice neighborhood, so I guesspublic smoking is going mainstream.

I little while later, I car turned onto the dirt path that I was running on. The car had no business being there, and it was headed straight for me. I wasn't scared, but I started all of my contingency planning for escape. The car stopped about 100 meters from me and the driver pulled out a massive camera and took a picture of me. It was really strange.

Finally, a record number of people were walking their dog off leash. The only situation that was scary was when I encountered a guy with his two German Shepherds off leash. The dogs were fine, but there is no way to really know until it is almost too late.

I ran the first 4.5 miles really slow. Just eyeballing the paces, I probably averaged something like an 11 minute mile.  Again, just eyeballing, I'd guess that miles 4.5-13 were about 9:45.  Miles 13-17 were at an 8:40 pace. I averaged those 4 miles with a calculator. The last 1.3 were basically a cool down (about 10:50). I guess it would be fair to call it a progressive run.

The view was so nice in one particular spot, that I went back later in the day to take a pic. Most of my run is in suburban neighborhoods, so the view was a nice treat.