Huge Sigh of Relief. It Was Not a Fluke!

I was able to run for 25 minutes again! It was not a flash in the pan accomplishment created by a super special alignment of the planets + 15 hours of sleep or something. This is great news.

So actually, I got like 6 hours of intoxicated sleep last night (um, Superbowl followed by live band karaoke. And yeah, I do waaaaaaaay too much of my partying on Sunday nights). I noticed on Saturday after I completed my run, I finally was not smelling ammonia afterward. I think it's because I drank a fair amount of water that day -- I babysit most days and it's really hard to get a sufficient amount of water in when you're chasing after a kid. So I figured the water may have helped, and when I got home today I drank a couple of glasses to make sure I had enough (I also drank a grande latte -- I am really lucky I did not pee my pants during this run!).

I was seriously tired today, but we're supposed to get 12 inches of snow tomorrow so I wanted to run before that. I headed out a bit later than usual, around 8:30, and used one of my own playlists again -- also nice to know I don't necessarily require Carli's encouraging words to make it through the run. I started out in the park but after one lap, I had kind of a scare. This guy/kid/teenager? (I'm old now, btw, and I didn't really get a good look) was crossing the street toward me with his hood up, concealing his face; I expected him to go to a car or head toward the sidewalk that cuts through the park, but he kept walking straight across the grass directly toward me, which just seemed off. I realized quickly that there was no one else around. Like, I saw no one. And the running path is a few feet in from the edge of the park, which is across the street from all of the houses -- basically the chances of quickly alerting anyone to anything aren't in your favor. I picked up my pace a little (that and the adrenaline kicked my ass for a few minutes after this encounter, btw), keeping an eye on my shadow to make sure he wasn't coming behind me. I'm sure it was nothing, but I felt weird about circling the park again and decided to head over to run on the sidewalks, closer to houses (and my zig-zag path takes me on busy streets as well).

I'm usually pretty fearless about walking/running in my neighborhood alone but I realize that on occasion I can probably be overconfident. The guy was most likely just cutting through the park but, newsflash to dudes: when you walk toward a lone lady at night and you have your hood up, you are being creepy. So, don't do that. Thanks. I was skittish for the rest of the run, continually seeing things out of the corner of my eyes. Annoying.

But, anyway. I did it again! Yay! I think I'll keep to the 25 minutes the rest of this week, and move on to 28.5 next week.