Did the Madison route. Tried to keep the pace easy and mostly, felt pretty good. Was thinking about the upcoming trail race this weekend during the first mile. Thinking about my goals---breaking 30 minutes (was just a few seconds over last year), trying to get into the top 10 women and possibly the top ten age-graded runners, beat Cyndi K. by more than three placements (this is what I need to do in order to place ahead of her in the Dirty Dozen standings). I can't control some of these things so I am trying to focus on the breaking 30 minutes. Last year I think I was recovering from a cold so I really should be able to run a bunch faster this year. And then, when it comes down to the end of the race, I just have to try to pass all the women that I can.
Anyway, I was thinking about all this when all of a sudden I think I actually see Cyndi K. running towards me. I am pretty sure it was her. She was running with some guy, and they were coming down Erie as I was going up it. She was wearing the pink technical top from the Lady Distance Classic and she has the longish, wavy blond hair like Cyndi K., and she gave me a big hello. Had to be her. So that was kind of random. Huh.
Rest of the run went along pretty well but another odd thing was that I noticed the GPS seemed to be saying that I was running farther for this route than it did when I last ran it a couple of weeks ago. That's weird. I would have thought that the GPS would be at least as consistent as the shoe pod was.
Had a bit of knee twingey stuff going on in the last mile and a half or so, coming up Observatory. Also had noticed that my left and right feet are landing differently, and I'm not sure what to think about that. And my right shoulder/neck area is a little sore, like I pinched or pulled something or slept on it funny, and that was bothering me yesterday also.
When crossing Observatory at Delta, had a near miss with an inattentive car driver. I hate crossing that intersection. The woman driver (I am sad to say that it is always a woman who almost hits me) was coming down Observatory and turning right on to Delta. She looked to her left but not straight ahead where I was. I had the signal, the all-too-brief signal that you get at that intersection. I could tell she didn't see me so I hung back a bit and she cut me off. As she cut me off, she finally noticed me and gave me a little friendly wave.
Right. So I gave her the finger in response. Idiot. If I were a guy I probably would have pounded on the hood of her car as well. So she is lucky she just got the finger. Probably didn't understand what I was upset about. The fact that you could have run me over, moron, that is why I gave you the finger. Pay attention, and when you screw up, please recognize it and appear sorry for your mistake.
I noticed that she had a bike rack on back of her car, and I thought that she was probably one of those idiots who drives their car to the trails in the park and then rides their mountain bikes in there on the narrow little trails that are supposed to be pedestrian only. I hate those people.
Speaking of bikes, I forgot to mention on Monday that when I was out at Lunken I ran by the "ghost bike" that somebody put up in memory of Andrew Gast. I hadn't been sure before exactly where the accident occured. I thought it was closer to the intersection and that was why the driver didn't see the bike. But it was pretty much in the middle of Wilmer Ave., so based on that I assume the driver just wasn't paying attention when he hit Andrew Gast from behind.
If I'd had my phone with me I would have taken a picture of it myself.
Anyway, back to today's run. I was going to extend it a bit by doing a loop around the block to get it up over five miles, but the knee twinge scared me and I was going to be over 50 minutes anyway so I decided to play it safe and just stop when I normally would for this route.
Final time was 51:08 for what the GPS says was 4.92 miles. And here's the weird thing. When I ran this same route on Aug. 27, the GPS said it was just 4.74 miles. On that day, I actually ran a little bit faster that I did today, but the pace is getting recorded differently because of this mileage discrepancy. Whatever. Maybe I should just go back to the shoe pod, because at least it was consistent for the same course from one day to the next.
Anyway, according to the GPS, today my pace was 10:23. The good news is that this is right in the target range for an easy run. And whatever we want to say the distance was, 51:08 is a decent time for this route, assuming I was taking it easy. Which I mostly was. So this means I really am getting a little faster after all.
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