Starting a program

Goal: 3 miles

Ran: 3 miles

Where: upper reservoir track

Time: 29:58 (basically, a 10 minute mile)

I talked to Haakan about it, being that he is my running guru (though I really don't want to tell him that, he doesn't need the ego inflated), and he told me to just pick a 10K training schedule and then see how I feel once we get closer to the half-marathon. I have exactly 12 weeks until the Great Race, and I do fully intend to run that, and I think the half-marathon is like the weekend or two before that, so I guess we'll just have to see. So I picked the program in the Competitive Runner's Handbook that Haakan picked up a while back, and since the 10K and half-marathon training is basically the same for the first few weeks, I'll just see how it goes. It's kind of nice to see training with achievable goals, makes me feel like I'm in better shape than I probably am.

So I did my run around the upper track at the reservoir today, mostly because it's flat and I did miserably last time I tried to run up and down the hills on the lower track. Didn't help that someone's chihuahua chased me past a barbeque and I kept having to dodge car doors and misbehaving children. And I still haven't figured out if I prefer to run it clockwise or counter-clockwise. Downhill-big uphill-downhill vs uphill-big downhill-uphill. Probably six to one, half dozen the other, but I think that one is mentally easier than the other. Or maybe I'm just kind of pathetic that way, who knows.

But the run today wasn't bad at all. Weather was nice, not too humid or anything. There were teeny tiny baby ducks (and no dead ones this time, which is always nice, since then I can try to forget that I saw the dead ones last time) and not too many walkers or runners, so I didn't have to dodge around people too much. The fountain was inexplicably not working properly on my last lap, but it was still a pretty good run. I could have eeked out another lap if I really had to.

Here's my OT question of the day: when you see big hunks of acrylic hair lying on the ground, where on earth does it come from? I fully expected to see a bald woman when I got to the park because it seemed like every few feet there was like a handful of red curly hair. I find hair on my street all the time, and it just puzzles the hell out of me: who loses big wads of hair while walking down the street? Or is there a lot of hairpulling going on that I just don't know about? Or do those chunks of weave just kind of randomly come loose? maybe the glue melts in the sun if they're not sewn in right. There was no bald woman at the top of the hill for me to ask, so I guess I may never know...