The walls are melting with the heat

Sometimes I feel like we are never happy.  In March, I was complaining about the long, cold winter.  Now that the roads are melting, I'm kind of wishing for just a few flakes of snow or something to cool it down just a little bit.

Now, my dear Texan friends, I will only accept comments of the ilk "but it's x degrees here, weenie" if you are currently living without air conditioning.  If it is currently warmer than 85 degrees Fahrenheit inside your house, dude, I feel you.  If, however, you are currently enjoying refrigerated air while shaking your head at how soft I have become, I fear that my mild sleep deprivation may lead me to say something I would later regret.

I will confess, the heatwave has been bad for my running.  I have let myself be discouraged by the baking sun from running outside for three whole weeks.  I have, in the last week, reinstated my work gym membership and been on the treadmill, but there's not a lot to blog about running in a room filled with sweaty colleagues and daytime TV.

It's a little cooler today, so I decided it was time to start running outside again.  When I say decided, that makes it sound like the process was a little easier than it actually was - I dragged myself kicking and screaming out the door, only successfully motivating myself with my new mantra (with thanks to Jen Gebhardt and the Oatmeal) "Don't let the Blerch catch you!"

Today's goal was two miles.  I ran along the narrow, churned up path again today, which is now covered in lush weeds and thus even harder to run down as you can no longer see which bits are flat.  I think my strategy is going to have to be that I use the half mile until the end of the path as a slow jog/walk warm up / cool down and then do the proper run after the path.  Mentally, I want to resist this idea - "the countryside starts at the end of my backyard," wails my psyche.  But seriously, I used to travel nearly a mile to get to the park to run in Dulwich, and I value the integrity of my ankles.

I finished my run in 27:45, which equates to 13:53min/mile.  That's a lot slower than the 12:00min/mile I was running on the treadmill, but way more enjoyable.  I ran 4.5 miles this week (yay!).  1/2 marathon, I'm coming very slowly at you!