onepinkfuzzy

I'm pondering the wisdom of eating a cereal touted as "low-carb" for my post-run glycogen recovery meal. I've heard cereal is one of the best nutritional values as a post-run snack; but isn't that mostly due to the carbs? If you take the carbs out of the cereal, then what's the point?

Anyway, on to my post. Oh wait, I was going to do a spiel on the Oscars. Nah, I'll leave that up to Donald. (Is that coming yet, Donald?)

Okay, now, REALLY, on to my post.

I met my friend John at the River Path trailhead at 4:40 this morning. (For those of you who don't already know from regularly reading my blog, the river path is a cool, 20-mile-long multi-use paved "trail" along the banks of a wash here in Tucson. A wash is what used to be a river, but is now just a dry river bed that carries water during floods. In some parts, the path has a gravel side path and in other parts, it's purely dirt. I like to run it, because it's not too far from home, and I still get dirt.)

We set out for our 5.5-mile loop. It's chilly and dark out, and I am slightly less-dressed than I was last week (this week I left the fleece headband at home). I can already tell I'm doing better than last week, when I was soooo sloooow. It's a relatively uneventful run for the first mile. I try to unzip my jacket sleeves and have difficulty - we have to stop so John can untangle my left sleeve. Then some random guy in a hoodie on a bike comes flying by. I pull out my pepper spray and remark to John, "This is why I don't run the river path alone in the dark..." The guy takes off and we have no problems. I'm glad that at least in the winter, it's cold, so we don't have to worry about hobos stealing our stuff or otherwise harrassing us (known to happen on the river path). The next mile and a half goes by okay, although I manage to get the zipper pocket in the back of my jacket stuck as I try to stash my hat and gloves, and I get a side stitch from taking too much, just like last week. Then suddenly, a large shape looms directly to my left. A light is shining from the figure and I scream loudly and jump across the trail, almost knocking John over. He freaks out - "What?!" - and then I realize it was just a barricade on the side of the trail, with a light glinting off the reflective orange and white stripes. Whew. Our pace picks up from the adrenaline and we laugh down the trail. We run across the bridge to the other side of the trail, through the bus stop, and have fun talking fueling strategies. Suddenly, a cyclist wearing a headlamp plunges off a pedestrian bridge towards us and freaks us out. Oh my god, I'm gonna get run over! Then I have to stop yet *again* - this time to re-tie my shoe. We start back up and I notice a gigantic shooting star overhead. Oh, oh, oh! I say, pointing, unable to come up with words. John looks up and this meteorite just hurtles through the sky forever, taking it's sweet time burning up. Sparks are flying off of it, and I'm breathless. Wow.

We make it back to our cars, and realize we were 2 minutes faster this week, even with three stops (arm zipper, back zipper, shoelace). It was the adrenaline, I think! Still over 12-minute miles, though. (12:13 to be exact.)

Last night's yoga class was a good, slow stretching class, and today is the first day for the kids yoga class that Ash and I will be participating in. I'm excited, should be fun. For some reason, I had three miles on the schedule for yesterday, even though I'm not going to be running Mondays, and I was cranky so I blew it off. I can make that up easily in this next week. I got 15.5 miles last week, yay! So it's not exactly the 10% percent increase rule, but I think I'll be okay. My knees are still doing great (whew!).

I'm off to an incredibly busy day. Happy Running!