Critter Corral

After an unexpected 3 day break thanks to a random virus that I'm still not entirely over, I decided to take on W8D2 Friday night. Despite the fact that I wasn't quite at 100%, I somehow managed to cover more ground than I did on Monday (2.6 miles vs 2.53). Midway through my warmup run I came up on a dead snake, was black and about 4 feet long but a decent size in diameter. I kept expecting it to come after me when I passed, figuring he was just playing dead, but his status was confirmed on my return trip past that spot. I started the run well enough, maintaining a somewhat easy pace since I figured my breathing may not be as controlled as usual considering the circumstances.

About 6 minutes into the run I ran into my old pal, the armadillo. He scurried his way across the road before I reached him, though, so no antics were had. A couple times throughout the run I was able to pick up my pace a bit but I kept it slow and steady for the most part. For much of the early part of the run, I experienced the results of over-hydrating and had an urge to pee that got worse as I progressed. Once I reached the 1 1/2 mile mark, I paused the app at one of the few dark spots along my route and did my business. A few seconds later the app was back on and I continued along my way.

Stopping turned out to be a bad idea, though, because shortly after I began to experience some discomfort in my right lung and had every desire to stop running. I could honestly see myself, in my mind's eye, stop running and begin to walk. All the while that voice in the back of my head taunted me by expressing how much better it would be to walk. I kept pushing in spite of it. A little further down the road, I had to look down at my phone to see how much time was left because I was beginning to think there wasn't enough fuel in the tank. A time of 2:08 stared back at me and it was all I could do to keep running. I slowed down to, quite possibly, a bit slower than my W1 pace.

The "cooldown walk" announcement came an eternity later and a labored smile crossed my face as I tried to catch my breath. This was the closest I've come to being out of breath during the program but I was just happy I was able to finish. In total, I covered 3.3 miles during the workout which is a record for me. I'm guessing, at this point, that I could cover a 5k in roughly 33 minutes. At any rate, there are only 4 workouts left and if everything goes as expected, I should graduate next Saturday!