Well, Tuesday's run was on the treadmill and I'm pretty sure no one cares about that, so, moving on....
Wednesday, after a 1 week absence, I was able to get back to running with the Davidson Area Running Team . Once again a great group of people. So the big difference from last time was the fact that here in Charlotte it gets light pretty late. So since we start at 6, most of the folks have headlamps. So i had to purchase my new piece of tech:
Yes, I look a bit dorky with this thing on, but honestly, as long as the cars see me, and I can see the road, that's all that matters. It was a bit of an adjustment using the headlamp. At the start of the run I had the light facing almost straight down, but as the run progressed, I was moving it further and further ahead.
At the start of the run it was 60 degrees and about 85% humidity, so you could see your own breathe. We start out uphill pretty fast, and i was sucking wind almost instantly, thinking that i wouldn't make it too far at all. I made it with the group about as far as last week. But Chad stayed with me until the 4 mile/6 mile split to make sure I didn't make the same mistake as last week, and wind up falling. When we were running together he told me he runs 65 miles a week! That is not a typo! 65 miles. wow. So i finished up that run and made my way back to the start to spend a pleasant visit with the team at Summit Coffee. A good time.
On Thursdays, Julia is in dance class until 8PM, so i have some time to run. I wanted to do something different so I headed over to the Dowd Y in downtown (even though they call it uptown) Charlotte. Interestingly, I've spend more time in the past 2 months at the Dowd Y, which is 35 miles from my house, than i have at the Lowes Y, which is 3 miles from my house. During the day i used map my run to come up with something around a 4 mile run through Charlotte. It involved a little bit of looping but I came up with this:
Got to the Y, parked, and set off. The first thing that i noticed was the people. It was 5:30PM and people were leaving work for their commutes. I'm never in Charlotte at this time. Usually, it's weekends or later at night, when the city is like a ghost town. Seeing all the people, I almost felt like i live in a real city. Almost. Another interesting part was the stopping and starting. When I lived in New York City, it was just a fact of life starting and stopping with all the traffic lights. But down here, where I live, there's not a lot of that. But there is in downtown. It was kind of fun in a strange way. The last big thing I noticed is that Charlotte is really, really hilly. As I ran up and down the streets, it was up the hills, down the hills, over and over. My calves were hurting on the uphill, and after it was over i noticed that my toes were hurting from the downhills. It was definitely nice to do something different. Got to even go back to the Y and sit in the hot tub for 10 minutes before showering and going to pick up Julia.
So, today's moral: Go out and do something different. If you run a lot in the same place, run somewhere else, expand your horizons, who knows what you might see or discover.
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