Today's Long Run

Happiness is ...

having an unexpectedly good run today. Considering that I had a twinge of pain on my left knee and right ankle last night and felt mentally unready upon waking up this morning because I couldn't even decide which way to go today. I never know how my run is going to turn out until I take the first few steps and monitor how my legs and my breathing feels. Today, I decided to do the 5 minute run/ 1 minute walk intervals again and try to do it for at least an hour and a half. My legs and breathing felt pretty good at the start, even felt light and bouncy because I deliberately tried to run easily. So far no knee or ankle pain at the start so I just rolled with the good feeling. I kept going on this one long street not even knowing when I was going to turn around because I felt so good. I ran past a park where there were a lot of children playing soccer, boy's T-ball baseball, and girls softball. They looked like they were about 5 to 10 year old kids. So cute with their tiny uniforms. Moms and dads supporting and cheering for them. Some giving last minute instructions. One mom was playing catch with her daughter and another playing whiffle ball. So that part of the run felt good because there were a lot of things to see that distracted me. A few more blocks down the road, I finally decided to turn around because that would have given me a 2 hour run if I made it back home, which was more than what I had intended to do. I went down another street on the way back home, my pace and stride still feeling good, but at about the 1 ½ hour point, my form was starting to deteriorate. To make matters worse, my GPS watch froze after I paused it at a stop light then tried to start it up again. See, the GPS watch beeps when the 5 minute run portion ends and I do the 1 minute walk, then beeps again after the minute is up to signal me to start another 5 minutes of running. When it froze, I had to guesstimate how many minutes more I had to run and when I can start walking again. When that interval ended, I still had 12 minutes to go to finish 2 hours. So I pulled out my cellphone, switched it to stopwatch mode then completed the run. I think next time, I should also bring my regular watch along in case the GPS freezes again. When I got home I managed to unfreeze the GPS by mounting it on its charger. Then I had to extrapolate from the data up to the point where it froze, the additional last 12 minutes of the whole run. Not really hard to do with a running pace calculator. The total mileage for the 2 hour run/walk was 11.70 miles at a pace of 10 minutes and 15 seconds per mile. Felt quite good and satisfying. I don't know where I got the energy to finish the run today. Must have been the Skittles jellybeans I overdosed on yesterday.