Who Let the Dogs Out?

After last week, I headed into week 14 feeling more confident than ever. A long weekend, due to a snow day on Monday and a 2 hour delay on Tuesday, left my body well-rested and ready to run. Tuesday was one of my rare free afternoons where I had no commitments after school. I made plans with Sandy to get a 4 mile run in right after school, but the pouring rain changed our plans a little bit. I do not mind running in the snow or a light rain or even freezing temperatures, but pouring rain is usually where I draw the line. There is nothing more uncomfortable than clothes that are wet and heavy when you are running. So we opted for a 4 mile run indoors at school. I was not too happy about having to run in the hallways and stairs again after my run last week. However, I was not willing to run on a treadmill or brave mother nature. I did find that running through the hallways was much more pleasant when you have someone else to run with. We were about 10 minutes into our run when Nikki decided to join in with us and the run surprisingly went by much quicker than I expected. The map my run app on my phone was having trouble measuring the correct distance so we stopped running after 44 minutes and decided to call it a 4 mile run. While we were running, we kept running past 3 of our coworkers who had also opted for a hallway run Tuesday afternoon. I am so impressed that so many of my coworkers are now into running and am especially proud of those who are just beginning to get into running. I am not sure if there are even any other middle schools where you would find 6 teachers running through the hallways on a Tuesday afternoon. The only bad part of this run was the fact that the rain had stopped by the time that I got home from work.

On Wednesday, mother nature decided to repay us for her terrible weather on Tuesday with a 60 degree afternoon. I was extremely happy to be able to trade my under armour and gloves for a pair of capris during a January run. By the time that I was ready to run, there was a light rain and I was really hoping that it would not get any heavier. Luckily it did not and I actually enjoy running when it is misting out because it is pretty refreshing. I came home from work feeling extremely frustrated about many things and could not wait to get my run in. I set out for my run with no set distance in mind and just wanted to run until my legs stopped working. 1 extremely frustrated runner + 1 missed long run a few days before = a 9 mile long run on a Wednesday afternoon. After missing my long run this past weekend, I felt that a long run was extremely necessary and could fit into my schedule. I have been following one of Hal Higdon's marathon training plans, but I am currently a little ahead on my mileage. When I began the training plan, I was already a few miles ahead of where the plan started so I kept increasing my mileage slowly. In a few weeks, I will be right on track with Hal because some of his long runs jump up 2 miles each week. I am only letting myself jump up 1 mile each week until I catch up to Hal. I do not want to over train or injure myself so I am being smart about my training. I ended up completing the 9 mile run in 1:31:29, which is a 10:10 min/mi pace. I was extremely impressed with my time because I am usually much slower on long runs. I guess all of my speed work over the past few months and the frustration of the day really kept my legs moving at a decent pace.

This 9 mile run just so happens to bring back the comedic element to my blog. My last few posts have been pretty serious and technical. I do not think that many of my running stories can top the tale of the treadmill, but I am pretty sure that yesterday's run came quite close. I think that yesterday's run was even more comical than the time that I twisted my ankle when I tripped on a pop can during a run. So yesterday I set out on my usual 4.5 mile loop in my neighborhood, which is relatively flat for the most part. There are some slight inclines, which feel like hills to me, but they are more like small bumps in the road. I could've run this loop twice to get to 9 miles, but I was feeling adventurous yesterday. I was still pretty frustrated around mile 3.5 so I left the loop to run some hills. I normally do not run hills during a long run, but there were really no limitations during yesterday's run. There is one fairly large hill in my neighborhood that makes me want to throw up by the time that I get to the top of it. I was about 3/4 of the way up the hill when I decided to cut down one of the relatively flat side streets. I figured that I should not push my body too much if I wanted to complete a long run. This was my first time running through some of these side streets and I was not at all prepared for what happened next. I ran through a couple of side streets before I was ready to head back up the hill. Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw a large dog running towards me and he was barking like crazy. I immediately started sprinting in the opposite direction until I realized that the dog was on a leash. It's no secret that I run away screaming when a dog starts running towards me. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my brother was bit by a pitbull when I was 4 or 5 or the fact that we never had a dog growing up. I am not completely afraid of dogs, but many people who have run with me before have seen me run away from dogs screaming whether they are on a leash or not. I would feel stupid about this if my college roommate did not run away from squirrels screaming when we would be out running.

So I was already spooked when I rounded the next corner and all of a sudden I heard not one, but two barking dogs. I was running right past a house where two wiener dogs were roaming freely in front of their house without any leashes on. I knew that I should not be scared of such tiny dogs, but my instincts told me otherwise. I ran halfway down the hill literally screaming my guts out before I dared to turn around to see if the dogs were still chasing me. Now this is the part of the story where I feel like a total idiot. I turned around to see that both dogs were actually in an invisible fence and here I was waking up the entire neighborhood with my shrilling screams. If I did not already feel like a complete idiot for screaming for help from two tiny wiener dogs "chasing" me, then this next part of the story probably would not have been so embarrassing. As I continued sprinting down the hill, I noticed some little old lady hysterically laughing at me from her driveway because she had witnessed the whole embarrassing hill sprint. I am sure that I must have made this lady's day and I am glad that my stupidity can entertain others. Needless to say, the rest of my run was completed on roads that I have already run hundreds of times before. So I'm pretty sure that the dog "chasing" ranks pretty high up on the list of embarrassing running moments, but sometimes you just need a little speed work in the middle of a long run. So the next time that I muster up the courage to brave the giant hills in my neighborhood, I will greet those tiny wiener dogs with chants of "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?!"

168.45 miles complete in 28:10:07 and only 114 days until conquering 26.2 miles!