Did not feel well at all today- I got a sore throat at some point during the night and then started feeling nauseous and sorta dizzy partway through the day. Also I fell off my bed (approximately 5 feet off the ground) while trying to close the window last night and smashed into my desk- pencils went flying. So to say I felt a bit off today is an understatement. I considered skipping the run and taking a fabulously long nap in hopes of feeling better, but decided against it.
I decided to meet at the track at a little bit after regular practice time in case the 800 girls decided to meet up today (they're always late). However, because of my irritating inability to be late for anything (although, I admit, it's not nearly as irritating as my mother's incredible ability to be late to EVERYTHING), I showed up at 3:03 (practice is at 3:10). After about four minutes, I got sick of waiting, so I left before finding out if anyone was meeting up.
I went down to the Island Trail and was having a grand old run until I hit a slight snag: I passed a nice old man standing on one of the bridges over the canal. He said "hi" and I said "hi" and then he said "have a nice run" and I said "thanks" and I kept running. But then I looked at my watch and realized I was 3 minutes away from the turnaround point, meaning I'd probably have to pass him again on the way back. And then my social anxiety started to set in. I hate passing someone twice on a run- mostly when I'm by myself. Not for any sensible reason, it just makes me feel super awkward and anxious. Generally I'd just turn down another road on the way back and avoid the situation altogether. But I was on the Island Trail, meaning I was stuck between a canal and a cliff with a friendly old man standing between me and the only way out. So the only feasible solution was to take extra long before turning around. So I ran an extra 2.5 minutes to make it an even 20, then stopped and stretched for a ridiculously long time. Then I got up and started running back- slowly. Then I hit my second snag: I passed two of the USU guys running the opposite direction. This didn't seem like a problem at first (except for the fact that they said "well, look who it is," thus implying that they know me, and I didn't recognize them at all) until I realized that at some point they would be turning around as well and with me going as slow as I was, they'd probably pass me again. This caused me even more anxiety than the old man, so I picked up the pace and tried to get off of that stupid trail as quickly as possible (good news: the old man had left and the guys never passed me again). I had a pretty good pace going the entire way back, so the run ended up being like 37ish minutes (my watch didn't restart after a stoplight at 34 minutes, so that's an estimate). Then I had 8xstrides on the practice field and a full set of legs. I didn't actually remember all the leg exercises though, so I just kinda did what I knew, plus some that I probably made up in my mind. I felt not so sick afterward though, so that's way good.
And that's the personal account of my 40 minute run by myself. My ability to turn a relatively uneventful run into a story as long as the run itself astounds me. It's a fairly useless skill, but hey. I'll take what I can get.
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