Thursday, August 19, 2010

An enjoyable run. In Florida. Yes, really!

As an astute reader of this blog, you are undoubtedly aware that running in Florida is not my favorite thing.  But when I get to run around a neighborhood with lush gardens, stately trees, beautiful houses, and a peaceful route, I cannot complain.  Especially when you add in a sky filled with infinite shades of orange, pink, and purple during sunset.  This was in the neighborhood across the street that is built around the 1920s golf club.

DISCLAIMER: it was still hot.  And humid.  And I got insanely sweaty.  So it's not like this was my dream run.  Given the conditions, though, it was about as awesome as it gets, in my opinion.

(I tried to get a picture of the sunset.  I really did.  But I just barely missed it by, like, 5 minutes.  Next time).

Work made it difficult to run this morning because hey guess what?  We had a meeting!  So I decided to leave it until the night, which made me nervous all day.  When I first moved to Florida, I started running at night and did not enjoy it one little bit.  For the first couple of weeks or so, I would make it to two miles and then I would have to stop.  This wasn't an option.  I literally could not continue.  Eventually I got better but it was very frustrating for me and I've tried to avoid running at sunset ever since.  However, after running in the morning, I have to say that running at night really doesn't seem so bad.  Second, leaving runs for later gives me cause for concern that I won't go.  In part, this is a practical concern: there is always a possibility that there will be a thunderstorm since that happens frequently in the summer.  But I also have this nagging worry that I just won't do it.  This is a bit silly, in a way.  After all, if I can motivate myself to go in the morning, why wouldn't I be able to to it at night?

Probably this builds into a bigger concern that I have about missing training.  I'm fully aware that missing one day is not the end of the world and that it won't completely derail my training.  What makes this even sillier is that if something had come up today, I could have gone tomorrow.  But still, I worry.  And today, all was for naught because this was easily the best run that I've had since I started this training program.

Another great thing about running in the golf course neighborhood: there are hills.  This might seem like a weird bonus, since hills are hard to run.  But because hills are hard to run, that makes them great for training.  Now, these weren't sizable hills by any stretch of the imagination, but they do count.

To make things even better, my new yoga DVDs showed up today.  And when I was stretching tonight, I noticed (gasp) that I am even becoming very slightly more flexible.

Good day.

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