I'm Like A Flock Of Seagulls Song

I haven’t been running outside very much lately, and I forgot a cardinal rule: however far one runs out, one has to run that far back. My recent runs have been on the dreadmill after I do my weights. I haven’t had a chance to get to the gym this week because I’ve been busy at work, so I made time for exercise today. I didn’t feel like going to the gym because I didn’t want to get home at quarter to six and today was a chamber of commerce Florida autumn afternoon. All of this factored into my running too far and too fast. I was planning on doing my standard thing of running down to Memorial Park, seeing how I felt, then either continuing on to the Y or running home. The first monkey wrench thrown into the works was the construction behind St. Vincent’s. I had to alter my route, which threw off my visual cues that tell me how far I’ve gone. I had my Garmin on but numbers don’t really mean anything when I’m running. I got to Memorial Park and did two laps instead of one and then continued along the actual river instead of heading up Riverside Avenue, which threw off my visual cues even more. I cruised up the hill under the Fuller Warren Bridge and along the River Walk. I felt great and a great song started on my iPod, an eleven minute song. Fueled up on adrenaline from the Metallica’s Mercyful Fate medley, I hauled ass up the train bridge and didn’t come to my senses until I got the landing and wondered, “What the f**k am I doing here?” I turned around and saw St. Vincent’s on the damned horizon. That’s when it hit me that I was going to have to run all the way back. I looked at my watch and saw that I was almost four miles from home. I had planned a nice and easy run to just get the blood flowing and keep my metabolism up. Well, I was stuck, which was both a good and bad thing. The bad was that I didn’t bring any fluid because I didn’t plan on running this far, and even though I felt good, I knew I wouldn’t when I was done. The good is that I got some extra miles in, I didn’t feel bad at the end, and I’m in better shape than I’ve been in since LMJ was born. It’s time to start looking at sprint triathlons in 2010.