Running Post #2

My friend and I went for our (my) first long run yesterday. I was so excited that I was already thinking about it as of Thursday. No joke. Friday night, I could barely sleep. Saturday morning, I woke up hours early. I killed time by having breakfast (and, I'll admit, coffee), playing with Charlie, and even cleaning the apartment.

We started off with a warm-up by walking for 10 minutes. It seemed like a bit much to me, but I surrender all running-related decisions to my running partner because she's been there and done that. Quite literally.

I suggested that we explore North Berkeley.Even though I've lived in this city for 4+ years, I don't really get out much, so many of the sites we we saw were just as new to me as it was to her. That helped keep me going.

We did a 10-minute run, 1-minute walk pattern. I'm so glad that I had her there with me because that schedule can get pretty boring to stick to. We talked about everything under the sun (well, we talked about a lot of things and we were under the sun).

When surroundings started to become a little familiar, that too helped me keep going. I kept thinking to myself "I can't believe I made it here. Me. Me. The girl who can barely run a mile to save her life."

We ran up Grant St., down Hearst, followed Ohlone Greenway for a short while, strayed off the path and ran up Peralta (it was a bit steep, but we conquered it) to Solano Ave. After a quick pit stop to Safeway, we continued down Solano until we found Ohlone Greenway once again. We followed the path back down to Hearst. In keeping with our search for fresh sites, we chose a slightly different path home: we headed south on California and swung left onto Channing Way.

Our goal was to run 4 miles for the day, but we ended up going 5.6 mi according to Google (8 mi according to my un-calibrate-able step counter).

Google also reports that if we had walked the same path at "average speed", it should have only taken us about 10 minutes longer than it actually took us to complete the trip. Womp womp.

Anyway, that's how much of a n00b I am at running, but I don't care about admitting this all out in the open because I feel so happy for me! La la la...