Training Day 17

3/15/11 I'm trying to get caught up here... I just started a new job, so I don't have as much free time anymore, and this week I will be in Simi Valley, CA., so training is a challenge.

Today is a 3.5 mile run, and I was really looking forward to running in California. I hit the road around 7 p.m. It was really dark, and any direction that I could go there were hills, hills, and more hills. It's a good thing that I regularly run hills on my training runs at home. I headed off in the direction of a shopping center that was near my hotel & set my Nike + for a distance run of 3.5 miles, having no idea of what lay in the direction that I was headed. I have a bike light that I like to use on my runs; I think it works better and is easier to wear than a lot of other "running designated" lights.

This clips onto my clothing and I can set the strobe on it to three different flashing modes; it's much brighter too.

My route started out downhill for the first half of my run; I encountered a couple of traffic lights (boo), but I really enjoyed breathing the nice moist air, and running at sea level is always a plus for me when it comes to breathing. At the turn around which happened at a Von's I realized exactly how steep my descent was, but like I said before what goes down must come back up....I tried to just keep an even pace, and running back up all of those hills was actually not that bad of an effort. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire run, and I haven't felt that great in a long time. I guess the sea air agrees with my body better than the desert does. I'll have to look into scheduling more events in California, and now I am even more excited to run the Napa Valley Ragnar in September. There will be plenty of moist ocean air up San Francisco way!