I had my first full day without much help. Last week was a real whirlwind – learning all sorts of things. It began on Monday last week when I drove in and got my apartment. The apartment is about 10 miles from the Federal Building downtown. The apartment is a one bedroom – fully furnished place. It’s okay…and on the 3rd floor. That doesn’t sound like a big deal…unless you run 13 miles and at the end…you have to climb the stairs!!

Needless to say…I took the day off running on Monday. On Tuesday, I ran 3 miles around the apartment “neighborhood”. There’s not a lot of homes off the main drag (Bryant Irvin) but there sure is a lot of traffic! My first day was just an exploratory 3 miles. So I ran 1.5 and turned around. On Wednesday I ran the same route as Tuesday…only I kept going on Bryant Irvin. I followed it to the dead end (T) and then I ran out of sidewalk which about 2.75 miles from my place. So I took a little trail into the weeds that didn’t last quite a quarter mile…so I turned around and came back. The cool thing is that there are hills – some steep – around here. So it’s a little different than what I’m used to back in Memphis.

Thursday I ran another 3 miles…again just around the area. Nothing fancy. Friday I had a pace run scheduled for 6 miles. A fella  at work told me about a park that was an entrance to some relly cool trails…so I drove to the entrance of the park…only to find it was under construction!! They were doing some sort of improvement..so I squeezed through the locked gate and eventually found the trail. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long before I was back on the street I parked on!! I kept going…after all I was going all out!! It was on this run where I found the REAL entrance to the trails. However, I just kept running on the street I was on (Bellaire). I ran for a little over 3 miles before turning around. I lost a little time because I ran into a gated apartment complex and couldn’t find a way out! My timing of the cars coming in wasn’t very good. I had to keep moving!!

I ended the run where I started at about 46 minutes. I think my footpod wasn’t accurate…but we’ll see. I haven’t had a chance to download my data into my computer. I’ll do that when I return home on Friday. I did get in a 13 mile run on the Trinity Trail starting back near the park entrance I mentioned above…then ran to the entrance I found the day before. Overall it was a nice run. It began around 630 am and ended about 840 am. My average pace was 845 min/mile with an average heartrate of 133. I did start slow and there were limited hills on the trail… either that or my butt is in shape! HA!

I run 14 miles next Saturday. I hope Lisa gives me the time to do that…early that morning. I’m in a groove of waking up early and going to bed early…so I’d like to keep that trend going. By the way – I’m making a weekend trip home for the holiday weekend. Should be nice to see everyone. I sure miss them.