Time Is of the Essence

Workout: 5 miles, 10:08 average

Well, this was kind of a mess of a run, but all in all it was a great success!

I wanted to go somewhere new but near-ish to my house (this meant the awesome new trails were a no go), so decided to continue on down a trail I had started down before. There was a "6.0 miles" sign near where I started followed by a "5.5 miles" a half mile later, so I thought, "Wonderful, 5.5 miles of trail I've never been on!" Well, after about a mile and a half, I hit a very main road, and following the trail signs meant I took a left, went about a quarter mile, crossed the street and went a quarter mile in the direction I had come from, and then continued onto the trail. Basically, it was a half mile detour on a dumb road. I wasn't too happy about that, but it led me back to a trail so I continued.

This part of the trail was incredibly uneven, which made it really hard to get into a rhythm. Since it's been warm recently, the snow had obviously melted, turning the ground into mud and then refrozen. People have also been walking on it, which meant there were frozen footsteps everywhere and consequently very uncertain footing. After about a quarter of a mile, I turned around and had to do the whole main road detour again.

Despite these frustrations, I saw some nice sights:

Considering that I spent a lot of time on this run going down dead ends, turning around again, stopping to look at maps, running on shitty terrain, and having to go collect Bailey when she tried to go home with someone (what can I say, my dog's a sure thing), I think I ran a reasonable pace.

My annoying shins were delightful on this run! I was truly surprised. I guess all the double compressing (wearing my older, looser compression sleeves over my newer, tighter-both more restrictive and more awesome-compression socks) I've been doing has actually made a difference. That and icing. I'm still not entirely sold on icing. On the one hand, science just doesn't seem to support that it actually makes a difference (I'd provide links but time is of the essence!!). On the other, I like to think it's helped me some. I'll probably keep icing, but don't expect to hear anything about stretching anytime soon. That's crazy talk. Although the main reason I don't stretch is that I'm lazy. I'm just happy I can cite science as my reason for not doing it. I do, however, reserve the right to start stretching if I get desperate (let us hope it never comes to that).

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Oh, my haircut! Ta-da!

Taking a completely serious glamor shot makes me feel narcissistic, hence the double thumbs up.

Nothing drastic (in fact, no one even realized I got it cut), but at least I feel like a real human being now.