I knew I had to work today. But I took yesterday off. I didn't work at all, except to answer a couple of emails. Instead, I went shopping, ran errands, and went for a run.
Or at least that was the plan. The plan was to go for a run on the path by my house. A friend had told me that the plan goes all the way to a park out in Chantilly. So I figured it would work well for my usual 3 mile run.
I had tried it once before, but had ended up on a dead end in a neighborhood that was nowhere near as far away as Chantilly. So I figured this time I would take the left fork, instead of the right, and see how far it went.
The one thing that makes me nervous about this path is that it's in the woods. Lovely in terms of protection against the heat and sun, certainly cooler than my usual run around the local streets. But it also seems more dangerous somehow for a single female. So I wanted to try it to see how far the left fork stayed in the woods. But it was definitely on my mind as I headed out.
Usually I run for about 30 minutes. Yesterday, I decided to run further. It was 5 minutes down the road to the wooded path. I figured I would run 15 minutes down the path and then turn around. When I got back to where I would get back on my streets, I would have run for about 35 minutes and could decide whether I wanted to run or walk the 5 minutes back to my house. That was the plan.
I took off. 5 minutes down to the woods. Left at the fork. A nice run through the woods. Then the path crossed a street. I was about 10 minutes into the path part of my run and feeling nervous, as I said, about running in the woods. Since I recognized the name of the street and knew it would take me back to one of the main roads by my house, I decided to head out up the road and out of the woods. Down the street about another 10 minutes. All is good.
Except when I hit the main road, I realize that I am much further down the road from my house than another 10 minutes. And I'm tired - 25 minutes in. So I have to make a decision. Run for another 5 minutes to make my usual 30-minute mark. Or walk. I decide to run.
I head down the main road and take a side street that I think will take me back to the path. I run into a neighborhood and down several of the paths of the neighborhood, all of which seem like they should connect to my original path. Once I hit the neighborhood, I ran some and walked some. I walked to try to see if I could find my way better when I was more focused on possibilities. No go. Demoralized I stop running. I realized that I need to just go back to the main road and go back the way I know.
I'm now about 40-45 minutes into my workout. And I have a pretty long walk or run ahead of me. I'm about 2 miles from home. Remember that I usually only run 3 miles. two more miles is much too far. So I mostly walked back. It was another 30 minutes before I got back to my neighborhood. Might have been more than 2 miles.
So what started out as a run that I wanted to be a "little" longer ended up as a run / walk for 1-1/4 hours. I was exhausted.
Today, the plan was to work for a couple of hours after lunch, go do a little shopping, and head to the gym to work out. The amount of work I had to do ended up taking longer than I had planned. So I was going to skip the shopping and just do the gym. Then, as I was deciding about whether I would go work out and come home to finish up my work, I got a call from my niece and her husband. He was coming over to help me move some furniture. He had thought he was going to get out to me between 6 and 7. It was just about 4. They were early. At this point, I decided that I would just work through and have them come. Maybe I would get a workout in later, but if not, well, it happens.
I didn't end up finishing up work until 7:30. Much too late to work out. But then I realized that I had essentially done a double workout yesterday.
A present. Thank goodness.
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