The Rowe Family Blog

On Sunday I was out on the road “all alone again” (Metal Church, Anthem to the Estranged).  John wasn’t able to join me on a long run due to his injury.  I decided to set out on my own anyhow.  Since I didn’t have a runny buddy it was really hard to get up at 5 AM to prepare for a long run.  So I did what you’d expect, I waited until about 10 AM to start the run!

I saw a lot of road kill Sunday morning… I saw the following dead animals in no particular order (hence the bullets and not a numbered list you fool!):

• a deer
• half of a snake (eww, that made me run faster)
• multiple o’possums
• multiple skunks
• multiple squirrels
• a turtle
• and probably more that I’ve forgotten

The smell was so bad in a few cases that I ran into the middle of the road to avoid it.  Besides all of the smelly rotting dead animals it was a good morning for a run.  It was overcast and somewhere around 65 degrees.  I made it to the half way point in about 56 minutes and I finished the 13 miles in 1:52.  With an average pace of 8:39 I’m pretty sure that’s the fastest I’ve ever run the Rowe Half.

Earlier in the week I was running a 6 miler and I saw a guy running ahead of me rather quickly.  I decided to try to catch up.  After more than a mile I did catch up.  We started chatting.  Oddly he too is going to run the Philly Half Marathon and his running buddy is going to run the full.  At the time the same was true for me.  He hasn’t yet run a full marathon mostly due to an injury – apparently a stress fracture.  He ran fast.  Very fast.  Because of him I put in 6.2 miles at an average pace of 8:02!  Wow!

Tonight I ran the 3 mile loop.  I was going to run 6+ miles but I cut it short early.  Just before my run I dropped the garbage can in the kitchen on my foot.  It hurt during the run and I didn’t want to risk having a more serious injury.  I figure that I was probably unconsciously adjusting my running because of my aching foot.  I really don’t need to put in 6 miles tonight and if I kept going like that I’d be begging for a knee or hip problem.

I’m thinking about starting to run during my lunch hour at work.  It’s dark out here by 7 PM now.  When winter really rolls in it will be dark by 5 or 6 PM leaving no real time to run in day light.  I can run in the darkness but I prefer it to be light out.  It would also open up my evenings giving Mary more time to do the things she likes and give us the opportunity to spend more time together as a family.  We have nice showers at work so there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t run at work.  I figure 5 miles or so at lunch should work out pretty well.  I might try that next week.