Day 3

My daughter climbed into bed and was parasitically attached to my back when I awoke at around 3:30am this morning. I got up and went to the couch but it was no good - sleep would not come. I was thinking about my running. I had built it up in my mind that this was going to be an amazing run. I was running with Anne-Marie too which was pretty cool. I was too amped up to sleep. I don't get like this about running. That psyched me up even more.

My warm-up was a little different. I went with dynamic movements instead of more static, stationary ones. I'm hoping the train of thought that muscles need to be woken up with locomotive movement as well as stretching before running and relaxed during cool-down with static stretching after running is accurate. I'm not sure my ass wants to feel like this all the time.

It was cold and clear this morning at 5:30am. I had a "No, not this shit." moment when the ZR app on my wife's iPhone informed me it was receiving gibberish from the server. 

It seemed to smarten up as I left. 

Something else I tried was keeping a steadier pace; ramping up to higher speeds and ramping back down when I need to slow down. There are theories that it is quick starts and stops that may cause some of the muscle issues. I'll see if it mattered when I wake up tomorrow.

My headphones pissed me off. I messed with the volume more than once and slowed more than I wanted to. 

Cool moments: I kept telling myself I could keep running, that I didn't need to slow down and that worked. My shins fucking killed though. 

As I made my way around overhanging foliage along Hope River Rd I basically came face-to-face with someone on horseback. They were stopped, just standing there which was a bit creepy but I suppose some sweaty guy lurching out of the bush would be enough to spook a horse so they stopped so it was less so. I couldn't really see the rider, but nodded and strode by. 

I'd be lying if part of me didn't have a flight of fancy that perhaps it was death on horseback, come for me. It gave me a laugh at the time. I embellished the scene in my mind to the point that I envisioned it playing out in a movie as such:

The runner comes around from a low-hanging branch and greenery and there is a black horse and rider. The rider sits motionless. The runner stops; unable to go past as the horse is blocking his way. Eventually the rider pulls back his hood to reveal a terrible visage; pale, smooth white skin; the face of a fetus - translucent skin pulled tight over a bulbous skull and black ovoid eyes. It pointed past the man and he turned, looking back to see a familiar form sprawled out on the grass. His own form. Lifeless. When he turned back to the rider, it was reaching out with one of its emaciated hands; urging him to climb up.

I took it easy for the last leg of the run; my right-side was splitting and is still sore now. I walked it off the rest of the way and eventually shut the app down as it was a run I didn't think worth recording. It took me a few tries to get it to upload to the site and when I did it was showing I stopped halfway and only collected 1 supply. I did adjust the volume at roughly that point but surely hopping over to the music icon and turning the volume up wouldn't shut it off?

Either way, I sent an email to Alex MacMillan from Six to Start to explain the issue I was having.

So the run was okay all-in-all. The fact I had some ZR difficulties tells me I need to have an equally motivating, hopefully non-electronic option so that when technology fails I'm not so bummed that I don't want to run.

All I can say is I'm looking forward to Wednesday's run. 

Bring it on.