run, rest, eat, bitch, buy things, cross-train, blog, repeat.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Minivans can be very creepy.

So, last night, I didn't go to target. I worked too late and had to get home in time to watch the Fast Money repeat at 7pm. So, I made cookies instead. So much for breaking the stress-eating cycle.

This morning was my track workout. Well, I woke up and decided... you know what? I dont feel like driving to the track. I'm just going to run "road intervals" (I'm not sure if that phrase even exists, but whatever). I'd find the flattest half a mile stretch and do my repeats there. Now, let me preface by saying... finding a flat half of mile stretch in middle TN is NOT an easy thing to do. Anyways, I found one.

The crappy thing is that my wonderful new ironman watch is all jacked up or something. Like, I dont know how to program it or anything. I read the instructions when I first got it on how to get it to save splits, and since I only ever need to record splits like every 3 weeks or something, I forget how to work it and just end up pushing a bunch of buttons until it starts timing. This morning, I got it going and then after my first interval, I hit the split button and when I looked back down at my watch to see how long of a recovery I was doing, it gave me like 5:15 or some crap. WTF? So, apparently, I've got my freaking watch set on TOTAL time instead of split time. Uggh. So, I didnt know any of my splits until I got into work, googled a time calculator and figured them all out.

At least I was consistent:

Interval 1: 4:36
Interval 2: 4:09
Interval 3: 4:09
Interval 4: 4:10
Interval 5: 4:19
Interval 6: 4:19
Interval 7: 4:12

Not too shabby, considering my pace lately is akin to that of a sloth.

I didn't enjoy the road intervals as much as I do the track intervals. Mostly because of construction workers. So.... you can't throw a rock in Nashville without hitting a construction site. Hotels, Condos, etc going up EVERYWHERE. For my intervals I had to run around the same 3-4 blocks 7 times, right? Well, not a big deal except for creepy construction guys who get to work early and park on the side of the road and sit in their cars. Most of them eventually got out around interval 3 or so (the sun was coming up then). Except for two shady looking dudes in a mini-van. Everything in that sentence should scare you. Everytime I passed by them, they stared me down and made me feel crappy. The unfortunate part is that at the point I was passing them, was when I was running my recoveries.

Eek. These dudes totally creeped me out. Now, granted, I think I'm a little more scaredy cat (I have too wild of an imagination) than most people, but I have a rule... if I ever get a weird feeling while out running alone, I can bag the run guilt free. Better to be safe than sorry, right? Well, I didn't follow my rule this time because I was hoping that they would leave with all the other guys, but they didn't. So, when I passed them for the 5th time. I finally got the bright idea.... why don't I just turn around when I finish my next intervals and cut down between two blocks to avoid the shady mini-van guys. Brilliant!

Sometimes it astounds me how stupid I am while running. That could be dangerous.

2 comments:

April said...

Were the shady guys carrying a big stick? That would be really bad. But I'm glad you wised up to avoid them. Hey, maybe I can do track workouts with you when i visit...

Dana said...

One of the hazards of running alone(esp. for women) is encountering things like that. Glad you avoided them.