Chicken, anyone?

Don't you just hate it when you've got to run through a 4 way stop sign intersection? I'm always playing a game of chicken at every stop sign I come up to.
Some drivers are great. They wait patiently, and I always make sure to give them a wave of thanks as I pass in front of them. Then there are the drivers that are undecided. They size me up.. how fast am I going? ..and should they make a full stop or barely stop if they want to go before me. Ugh. Only one time so far, did a person make a full stop, and then start just as I reached the front bumper. That was a close one. wtf?
</rant over>


It was a long day for me today, I started my home care early at 8 am. My last was at 4 pm, so I finished up at 5. The day had cooled off considerably, but I was tired. My last patient is a left hemi, so I do a lot of physical, resistive work with him, including his unaffected side. On the drive home, I questioned whether or not I should take the day off from running. After my ten mile run on Sunday, both my ankles were achy, on the inside.  I have been running lately only 3 times a week, but last week I did two long runs (for me) on the weekend, which brought my total to 4, and 22 miles. This was the most I'd ever run in a week. I remained sore into Tuesdays run, and was really sore yesterday. Hmm.. what to do?
But, I couldn't pass up the glorious weather, and it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so I wanted to feel good going into the morning. I geared up, capris, compression sleeves, toe socks and my Brooks Adrenaline gts12. I wore a c9 mid layer long sleeve, high collar tech shirt, and went out into the 59 degree day. I've changed over from my LG-HBS700 BT headphones, and decided to wear my Mobi BT headset, as an added precaution to keep my ears warm. I find that although I LOVE running in this weather, I do get cold and uncomfortable. My next purchase will probably be a pair of gloves.
Next, I put on my Magellan Switch Up GPS watch. It quickly found a satellite, my heart rate monitor, and my foot pod. Sweet. I had played with the Garmin Forerunner 405, and the Motorola MotoActiv. The Garmin could not reliably acquire a satellite signal, and the Motorola just stopped working one day. Thank the retail gods for Amazon. They went back - and my last ditch effort was the Magellan, and it's been by far, the best for me. As an adjunct, just in case something does fail, I have my android phone running MapMyRun, while I listen to WinAmp crank out my tunes.


My plan was for 4 miles, and to try to come under 18 mins at mile 2. My biggest problem has always been starting out too fast, and today was no exception. I actually argued with myself to slow down during the first 200 meters. I'm sure just doing that elevated my heart rate somewhat. By a half mile into it, I relented, and concentrated on my cadence and form, and felt my breathing equalize to the effort I was putting out, and hoped for the best. About a quarter of mile before my 2nd mile marker on my route, I glanced at MMR, and it said I was at 16:23.  For some reason, I slowed down.  Don't ask me why, I have no idea. Once I snapped out of it, probably 10 seconds or so later, I decided to go for it, and stopped the clock at 2.02 miles, 17.53.  I sent the workout to MMR servers, and thought I'd can the rest of the planned workout. On my walk home, however, I decided to do some slow, long inclines. I did about a mile and half, and then called it a day. I had a similar experience with not finishing my planned workouts during the week last week, and although I worried for awhile about it before my long runs, I was pleased with what I was able to do on the weekends, so I'm not so concerned for today.





TPP