Running Errands

There are some days you wake up and just aren't feeling the run. Then, there are nights before the run when you already aren't feeling the next morning's run. Those times are not good. Even the commitment of an upcoming registered run doesn't always thwart the mental desire to just sleep in the next day ... or, at least to not spend the morning doing something demanding!

When I have such evenings, I spend some time making a very specific plan for the morning's run. I might change the route to see something up close that I usually only drive by. I might incorporate an entirely different street just to mix up the scenery. It also sometimes works to remind myself of how awesome the run feels after it's finished and keep that as my goal.

Or, like today, I plan the miles to accomplish something specific. Today's strategy: Use the miles to get my latest The Good Wife disc in the mail! I finished it last night and most definitely wanted it to get in mail motion today, so instead of driving it to an early-out box last night, I figured I'd run it to the box today instead.

This is where being very used to carrying something to support
having a dog with me while running totally paid off -- carrying
this was simply no big deal. Who knew that kind of training
was so transferable??

My strategy totally worked. This morning, when I was playing the "just 5 more minutes won't hurt" game, I really only focused on how getting out of bed would accomplish getting that disc in the mail. You might say I literally ran an errand! Whee!

Along the way to the mail, I was greeted by my friend Copper Abe:

I do love the bike lanes -- they have a great track record for
the finding-money pursuit!

That was a good little pick-me-up because even though I slept a little later, I wasn't yet quite awake. I also had a good sized hill coming my way right after hitting the first mile, and I won't pretend like I was looking forward to it. However, that hill lead me to the mailbox, and that kept me mentally motivated (must. watch. more. Good. Wife. send. disc. back.).

A little more than half-way through the run, I arrived at my destination!

You were good to me, now I need another.

Of course, once I was there, I had to go back! Funny how that works.

The run back was excellent. For one thing, I finally woke up. For another, I used a little of my time to call my cousin to send the last-minute well wishes and prayers for her son who took his SATs this morning!! (I'd rather run ... just sayin' ...) It's possible I wished him well on his ACTs ... whoops. It's also possible I wasn't even clearly understood because I picked a very strategically wrong time to call as I was about to ascend a hill. Nice timing. I'm pretty certain the end of that message could only be defined as an obscene phone call especially when I wrapped it up with an out-of-breath, "I love you."

No, really, it's just meeeeee.

Once up that last hill, it was smooth sailing. It was so smooth that I was rewarded:

The great thing about finding this quarter
(besides it being a quarter) is that just 10
minutes prior, I was right over there
running on the other side of the street!

Right before finding that quarter, I found a very shiny penny. And, then there was another right before I wrapped things up! That's 28 Food Bank cents if you're counting! Wahoo!! Man, getting out of bed really did pay off! It ended up being a fabulous run.

Also fabulous was downing this when I got home:

Don't worry, Diet Coke, I still love you. There's room in my
heart for you both.

It's on with the day and looking forward to Rest Day tomorrow!! A week of Half Marathon training is in the books, and it only gets more fun from here! Stay tuned, and I'll see you tomorrow!