Day Twenty One

Dear Rock Creek Trail,

Thank you for letting me kick your ass today.

Until next time,
Leah

What a beautiful weekend! My goodness. I woke up and decided to do the Rock Creek Trail which is very, very close to my apartment. I knew I needed to drive to the trailhead and I had googled the trail to see what I was getting myself in to. I knew I wanted to park on the north side of Cornell so I didn't have to cross that during the trail. I also knew there was a police precinct right there that was perfect to park in. However, when I got there I couldn't do it. There were so many police cars (as expected) and it was just too intimidating. So in the process of trying to turn around, I came across the park that the trail actually starts at, Orchard Park. So I just decided to park there, how intimidating can it be to cross Cornell?

I set my RunKeeper (I upgraded to Pro I was so impressed) and started the 5 minute warmup. It took me through the little trail to Cornell and then I crossed Cornell (slightly odd to have everyone watch, but eh, get over it). Started running by the police precinct and didn't stop till Evergreen Highway! I ran for 15 minutes, walked for 1 minute and ran for another 15 minutes! Yeah!

I did come across two women running... far faster than myself. They passed me on a turn around area and so I knew they were going to be coming up behind me, but when one woman yelled "Left!" I thought I was going to pee my pants. Really?! I understand you are supposed to do that... but it's a pretty wide path with no one else on it and I was to the far right. Goodness.

I stopped running along the side of Cornell and I might have teared up. I was starting to think I was going to have to live with the fact that I can't run the whole race. This gave me a little bit of hope again.

I got back to Orchard Park and saw the swings. I rewarded myself and then felt guilty when a family of four showed up and I was hogging the swings.

My pace sucked. Part of me hopes that it's so bad because it calculates in my 10 minutes of walking. I can't seem to figure out how to break the run down by time as opposed to speed and/or distance. I want to know my pace during the warmup/running/walking/cooldown etc. I also hope that maybe it has something to do with the GPS as it said it was "poor" through there. Which seems odd as it's not even a heavily tree'd area. I believe it calculated in my time on the swings too as I didn't push stop even though it said "workout complete". This was also the most elevation gain/loss I'd ever done. Plus it's the most running I've ever done. I suppose I should cut myself some slack. I only walked one minute out of 31 minutes! How great is that?!

I have three weeks to get to 36 minutes of running straight. Although that will no longer cover the pace I'm running (unless adrenaline kicks in) it at least gives me a fighting chance to finish the whole race running.

2.88 miles in 41 minutes