Grab Your Partner, Do-Si-Do...

One of my goals has been to eventually run around the square. In our part of the country, the country roads are laid out in mile squares, so running around them is four miles. The square we live on is a little less - 3.8 miles - due to part of the road being diverted around a creek.

Ashley and I didn't run after work today because she had a softball game, so shortly after I got home, Romie and I ran together. The temperature was perfect and it was a nice sunny day, so we decided to do the Square Dance, which is what I call this "running around the square."

The light wind was out of the northeast, so we headed north first. About .3 miles later, we turned the corner and headed west. Our first goal was to make it to the end of that mile without stopping. With the wind behind us, it wasn't too difficult, although Romie mentioned he wasn't having much fun.

We both made it to the corner, turned south and about .25 into that mile, I knew Romie's attitude had changed when he said to me, "I'm in the zone now." I knew exactly what he meant. We set our next goal as the next intersection. That would mean that we had run 2.3 miles without stopping. No problem!

We turned the corner and headed east. Now the wind was in our faces, but it was pretty light, so it wasn't much of a factor. Fatigue was making its appearance, so we set a shorter goal of reaching the "Stop Ahead" sign (for the stop sign we'd just passed). We made it to that, then added first one telephone pole, then another, until we neared the only house on that road.

At this point, I looked at my watch and it was nearing thirty minutes, so we decided to stop when thirty minutes were up. That brought us to the house, where we stopped and walked the rest of the way home.

WOW. We both had run thirty minutes without stopping. Oh, we could feel it when we stopped to walk, but a few minutes of walking and things felt pretty good. Had we pushed ourselves? Yes, but time will tell if we did too much. Neither of us was very winded, but we could definitely feel it in our legs.

When we got home, we got in the car to see just how far we'd run without stopping. TWO POINT EIGHT MILES!! That's very nearly a 5K, which is 3.1 miles. I just can't believe it. I can remember days when Romie and I thought we were getting good exercise by riding our bikes around the square.

The bar has definitely been raised.

114.5