~

It was only 17 C this morning! I ran 8 miles

and I heard some new tunes! sorry in advance for ads :/

time to commit?

Once again, the weather cooperated for my long run! Yeah, it was about 31 C by the time I finished, but it was shady/overcast for the first two hours, and then it was sometimes cloudy, with a slight breeze here and there. Can't beat that during summer! I also ran the sprinkler during hour three.

Total: 16 miles solid jogging, no walking.

I'm so happy with that because it was supposed to be just sunny, which means almost full sun by 9 or so. Also, to minimize sun exposure, I'd planned to start running at 6:30 am, but because I stayed up until about 11:30 pm watching UHF last night, I barely made it out before 7 (6:57 hahaha). During the first hour or so, I wasn't sure how long this run would be. However, I was feeling good and my husband was home to help our son, and make coffee for me...it was my day.

So, what are my goals? I'm still not sure how long many more weeks we'll be down here, and thus what my longest run will be before I move back to where running conditions won't be as suitable for really slow but reeeeaaally relaxed jogging. Can I commit to a marathon distance? Or beyond? I think I can pull off a 20 miler at least, at any rate.

Meanwhile, 16 miles is my longest run since having my son in 2015!!! what?!! Yeah, I got back up to 14-ish miles by about 14 months postpartum, at which point I got pneumonia (!!!) and it's been one struggle and/or illness since then, until March when I started social distancing (I think I've been sick only one week since then). So I'm hoping to push the miles until I have to go back.

I'm also trying to get back into posting music tracks; I'm listening to ah/fm right now, and I've also been enjoying Delta Notch, but I'm not dealing with "Track ID??" these days :( Oh, well, something has got to give.

Admittedly, I've been listening to podcasts and not music while running: Office Ladies, Fake Doctors--two of my favorite shows discussed by some of their main cast, with various guests! It would be amazing if Peri Gilpin and Jane Leeves did a similar podcast about Frasier btw.

Also, it's Trump and his administration/supporters, and not Obama, who is/are "the Great Divider." I could write loads about what is happening in this country right now, but I'm going to try to incorporate something, anything, as much as possible, off this list in Real Life because this seems to be a good resource for us white people who want to help make things safer for people of colour. I've lived in various parts of "Trump country" even pre-Trump, if that makes sense, because that's where military bases tend to be--and I've had a few awkward convos, but that's it. I could be doing more.

!

I jogged 12.7 miles in the backyard yesterday. Yeah, we're still here. Anyway, I wasn't planning to run so long, not after such a lackluster month. Since my last "long" run in April, my longest run had been 3-5 miles, something like that. I was sick for about a week (not COVID-19), the weather didn't cooperate, I didn't get up early enough so had lots of interruptions especially early on which wrecks my warm up and thus makes the entire run a struggle, etc.

But, yesterday, everything went right. I got up early enough to get a good 1/2 hour in before the first interruption, and clouds came. The temp got up to 29 but it was overcast by then, plus I turned on a sprinkler. If I had planned ahead and put my fuel on the patio, and thus not had to go into the house and get waylaid by something for a few minutes (long enough for my legs to decide "that's a no, dawg"), I think I could've kept going, but I'm still really happy with the run. I'm still really slow in the backyard, particularly since I am trying to avoid the 3 tracks I've worn in the yard so far, so it took me almost 3 hours (!). Yeah, 9:30/mile is like tempo effort. Whatever, these are strange times.

However, I managed a lovely ~3 mile recovery run out there today, and that might be the true turning point. I've gotten into this habit of running 2-3 times a week (okay, sometimes closer to 1) that whenever I do manage a "long-ish" run, I don't do a recovery run the day after. But recovery runs really help!

I think we'll be down here for another month at least--I'm still figuring things out. well, everyone is! To document my present real-life knot of knots would take more time than I have, but these days I'm applying and cold-emailing to find places to rotate at for the next year, and meanwhile my school decided to change my email address this past weekend. I think stuff is migrating where it should now, but ehhh, timing sucks. Also, the testing centre where I'm supposed to write my board exam in August had a major fire and is supposed to reopen in June, no July 1st, no, July 31st....and writing in August was already kind of messing my timeline, but now my August school-mandated rotation is no longer mandatory, but I haven't heard if I'm still going or if I was even accepted in the first place (it's complicated) so I've applied to a couple of virtual rotations because since my son's school is reopening now (he's not going back yet, no way), they'll probably take the usual first week off in August and I'm SOL with childcare. Yeah, I could pay someone, with maybe a little extra virus on the side? So every month is kind of like this, but August smells the worst. However, I think it'll all pan out. A while back, I was freaking out because I couldn't get a seat for my boards in July, but then the place caught fire.