Week Three - Day Two, Thursday, August 1st.

Under threatening skies, I headed out not long after seven AM for today's four-miler. I'm not a fan of getting out after six in the morning, since the streets around here get busy early on weekdays. It's either take your chances on the shoulder of the road with some knucklehead who isn't paying attention or run on the concrete sidewalk, which is sometimes uneven, and in many cases non-existent altogether, depending on where I'm running.

On these shorter routes, I don't plan out where I'm going, so much as I make corrections as I go along. Do I go this way, and run a couple of hills? Or that way with less traffic, where I can run towards the middle of the road? The Nike app has a feature that if you set a distance, or a time, it will tell you the halfway point, so sometimes I just find a place to turn around and head back the way I came, or I'll keep going a little farther, maybe an additional half mile before making a turn back in the other direction, so I have a chance to walk and cool down before I get home. If I'm really pressed for time, I'll just retrace my route, with a reasonable expectation that I will make it home around the time I need to be there.

Today was a make-it-up-as-I-go-along kind of day. I headed up OFR to Chestnut, the next traffic light up, then down that toward Hooper. There's a small development on the left that I ran into, since it was off the busier Chestnut, and offered me a way to get out without having to make a U-turn in a cul-de-sac. Back down Chestnut to OFR, then up to Mapletree, where I made a turn into a condo complex to avoid the steep hill before Hooper.

About halfway back along Mapletree, I came to the realization that my breathing wasn't all that difficult, that my legs were more fatigued than my lungs were. So, I figured that if I pushed a little faster, I could probably make the last mile in pretty good time, and my legs wouldn't be all that worse, which did turn out to be the case. Have to remember that for tomorrow's three-mile short run. Still strategizing Sunday's upcoming seven miles.

And finally, just when I was beginning to despair, the Nike Pep-talkers are back. Today was decathlete Ashton Eaton, who told me that "yesterday was good, but today is great".

Got in just before the rain, I did.