Week Ten: Saturday

I managed to face a fear that has been haunting me for a while now. I ran down the sidewalk.

My main fear is that I know that people will be staring at me and possibly mocking me and throwing stuff at me from their car. But if I am going to run a marathon, there are going to be a whole heap of people standing along side the road and I need to start getting used to being on display.

One person did yell something but I cannot be sure if it was at me, a passenger, or a cell phone. Otherwise it went pretty well. I always hate the awkward interaction with drivers at cross streets and cross walks that street running ends up forcing. Are they going to stop? Should I run? If they keep going the at the same rate and I do too I can run behind them, but will they think that I am running in front of them and slam on their breaks? Did they mistake the hands up “Thanks for stopping wave” as the “I am my own traffic cop and you should stop right now?”

This was a real accomplishment. I managed to run 6 miles in 65 minutes. I actually think it was a little more than 6 miles. I ran the first 4 and extra and then walked/ran the last 2. Since my running route left me 2 miles from home I timed my trip back to see how long the 8 mile route would take me. A little more than 8 miles took me about 109 minutes.