Yenta

There is a woman on my train that has a massive head of hair. I see her every day. Its very well coiffed, but its just a mass of hair. It’s actually quite ridiculous and it annoys and I would like to tell her that. The woman next to me is bothering the shit out of me. She’s been on her cell phone the entire ride. Granted, she is trying her best to keep the volume lower, but she’s been doing nothing more than bitching about her job, specifically a performance appraisal or something similar. She’s been complaining to “Glor” which I had to assume is Gloria. Apparently, her boss or someone made some comments about her being on the phone a lot during the day with the Gloria character. There’s a surprise – shes been on the phone with Gloria for 30 minutes on the train ride so its not unreasonable to assume that this yenta is on the phone more than she thinks during the day with Gloria. Listen sweetie, why don’t you do us a all a favor and tbale She’s married as well. Poor bastard. Seriously, I couldn’t imagine going through life with this woman. I’d have to hit her over the head with a shovel.

I ran 11 miles yesterday. That’s it. I was scheduled for 15-16. Hills. Hills killed me. That’s my excuse. My intention was to do the distance on Saturday morning. I met the running club for the 9:00 Saturday morning five miler at Ridley Creek State Park. My plan was to run the 4 mile loop 4 times for 16 miles. About ¾ of the way through my first loop, my iPod died and there’s no way I am running 16 miles without music, so I bagged the run. I told myself I would do the distance on Sunday.

My plan for Sunday was to meet the running club at the 7:30 run, do 9 miles, and then do the 5 mile course at 9:00, for at least 14 miles, with an add-on after that. I got up at 6:30 am and in my stumbling around to hit the snooze button, I turned off the alarm. By the time I got up, it was 7:30 am. So rather than do9ing the 9 am run, I decided that I would run home from daughters birthday party in Broomall.

According to Google Maps, the trek home is around 11 miles. I figured I could do some add-ons as I progress home to get the mileage up.

I think I picked the absolute hilliest course in Delaware County. It was just one hill after the next. The run started out with a slight riser for about a tenth of a miler. I hit another long, gradual hill about 2 miles in. About 5 miles in, I hit the dreaded Beatty Road Hill. This thing is a monster. When I was still doing a fair amount of road riding, I would go out of my way to avoid this hill. It might be one of the toughest climbs in Delaware County. It’s long, its steep and its twisty. However, I finished it, but when I crested the top, I was blitzed, and I was less than 6 miles into the run and I knew I had one or two more hills left in my trek.

The rest of the way home was relatively uneventful. I saw a woman blow a stop sign and get pulled over – that was kind of cool. I hit one more doozy of a hill going up Rose Valley Road, and I had to walk a bit of that one. I was completely hammered. Note to self: do long runs on something flat. The Sunday runs aren’t bad – we only hit one hill and it aint all that bad. I get the feeling that whoever laid that course out did their best to avoid the hills and I have no problem with that.

I wonder If there is some sort of “equivalency” calculation to convert “hilly” miles into flat miles. Example: there’s a rule of thumb to convert mileage when riding a cycling trainer: 3 to 1. 3 miles on the trainer is equivalent to riding 1 mile outside. I gotta think that there is something similar with running hills. I’ll have to look that up.

Am I disappointed that I didn’t do the allotted mileage? Yes and no. On paper, 11 miles is less than 16 miles, obviously, but when you take into consideration the hills, it makes the situation a lot more acceptable. Plus, I ran 4 miles the day prior, so I did run a total of 15 miles this weekend, which is about what I would have run if I had done the whole distance in one shot. I am not getting stressed about it.

I didn’t hit my mileage goal for the week. I have to do the final tally, but I think I only ran 24 or 25 miles – I was aiming for 30. My mileage for the week was a little light as well – I only ran three times leading up to the weekend and none of the runs broke 3.5 miles in distance.

So for today, I am going to join the running club for the 6:30 pm run at the Ridley YMCA. I’ll run the 3.1 mile as a recovery run.

The Pickle Run is this Saturday upcoming. I started to put together the volunteer assignment list last night, which is something we’ve never had to do in the past because we’ve never had any where near the participation we’re expecting for this Saturday – we’ve actually had to put some thought into this thing.