Up and Down. And Up. And Down. And Up...

And down.

That is what I did today for 8 miles.

Hello? Did you hear me?

I said EIGHT miles!

Not 4 miles. Or even 6 miles.

EIGHT miles!!

I did it by myself, and I walked for a total of 3:31, but my pace was still not too painfully slow (for me).

Here she is:



And this picture has been brought to you by MotionBased, thanks to the technological reciprocity that it shares with my cute little Garmin 305.

My Sweet Gazelle bought me the 305 for our anniversary. Knowing how incredibly badly I was jonesin for my very own Garmin, he gave it to me the day that it arrived on our doorstep. One more reason to love him.

So far, I've done 6 runs with 305, but during one of them, my battery died. Hence, I have learned to charge 305 as soon as I arrive home from my run! I am absolutely in love with my Garmin, and I think that everyone should get one of their own.

I also love how on days like today, when I'm running with an overabundance of bodies littered on MY trail around the lake, my beeping Garmin scares everyone and makes them move. Maybe they think I'm harnessing a bomb. I don't really care what they think, as long as they move.

Funny thing happened today. I came across one of those annoying zoomers during the last 1.5 miles of my run. Although I kept a steady (albeit slow) pace throughout my run, I was gassed out by the time that I got back to the lake path for my last 1.5 miles. As soon as I got back on the path, there was a pretty big hill to climb, and I had already done like 12,574 hills during the previous 6.5 miles. I was still running (albeit slow), and this guy zoomed right past me.

He had one of those weird 1995 spiked hairdos. And a very, very flat butt. That's all I saw as he zoomed by.

I am used to people zooming past me pretty often. Most people are keeping at least a 10:00/mile pace, and I'm just not there yet. I've figured out that I have staying power, but I'm not even a little bit fast.

So, Spikey Flat Butt zoomed past me, and I was like "meh...whatever". I already ran 6.5 miles bizotch.

So then at the top of the hill, Spikey Flat Butt is walking. I jogged past him.

A quarter mile later, SFB zooms by me again.

I proceeded to pass him again, as he walked off his tenth of a mile sprint. I don't know...maybe he was doing interval training or something, but that's just not generally something that people do on the lake loop.

We repeated this for for at least 1/2 mile, and finally I got fed up and just jetted past him. I have no idea where the energy came from. Sheer annoyance most likely.

Today's incident reminded me of the last 5K I did wherein this chubby kid kept doing the zoom/walk bit. I would pass him while he walked, then he would zoom past me as I jogged. Then walk again.

Repeat. For 2 entirely too long miles.

Unfortunately, during that race, I didn't have the same annoyance energy reserves as I did today. So, the chubby zoomer finished before me.

Grrr.

But not Spikey Flat Butt. There was no way I was getting crushed again by a zoomer. Especially not by a Spikey Flat Butted zoomer.