Running Road Map

There is something about running that makes my brain a little wonky. Today I went to the 6pm boot camp. It was a run day and we started on time like good little boot campers. I was about half way through my first lap when John drove by and said "Long Route". We've been running the blue line for a while but I've never actually run the long route. So I turned the corner and saw some of the other people in front of me turning so I followed them. I managed to keep them in my sights through the neighborhood of houses before I finally lost sight of them. I just kept going straight hoping that the path I should take would be fairly obvious. I ran up this huge hill and ended up back on a street that I was familiar with. I made the turn and headed back to the start of our run route. When I passed John he said I was going too slow, that I needed to stop singing to myself or whatever I was doing and run faster. I sped up, changed my music and stopped singing. I did go faster and as I went down the giant hill I'd run up before I got the feeling that this route was really much longer than it should be. I managed to make it back to the the starting point exhausted and obviously the very last person to finish. When I looked at the ipod I realized that it was already 7:20, and I'd been running for an hour and twenty minutes. I decided that I wanted to find out how far I'd actually run, so I drove the route. It took me 5 minutes to drive it and the total distance was 4.2 kilometers. I ran it twice so that's 8.4 kilometers, which is 5.25 miles. That is the farthest I've ever run. My legs are already starting to throb and I'm sure by tomorrow morning I won't be able to move. But now I know I can run 5.25 miles, so that's something.