Stopping By The Woods

It’s great to be running. This being the day I would normally try to put in a long run, I decided to go a little bit extra. So I did slightly over five. The hip pain is still there, doggone it, but I have to feed the addiction. My next physical therapy appointment is Monday, so hopefully it will help me make some progress.

There are no such things as trash miles for me. It’s all good. One of the perks about running on a non-work day is I get to start out a little later, when there is light, and I wear my iPod. When I run on a work day, it’s really early and usually totally dark, so I don’t have my iPod with me–all my senses are needed to detect oncoming vehicles in the dark, etc. But today I had no such worry, and I let the tunes rip. Motivatin’.

Another nice thing about these quick runs in the hood is just being able to go out my front door and take off. For some reason, the same old scenery has not bored me. Two loops around the subdivision, including all the cul-de-sacs, gets me a little over five miles, with minor, gentle elevation changes, like so:

So, it was good just to get out, run a little, break a sweat, breathe fast, get my heart rate up, think about my life, not think at all, smile at a neighbor walking her dog, appreciate the cool weather, huff and puff, admire the overcast sky, splash through rain puddles, notice the various and sundry Christmas decorations in the yards (including all the deflated blow-up kinds that look rather sad, pitiful and forlorn, which I have a special, weird appreciation for), and overall, feel good to be alive.

Here are the obligatory numbers: