Reassuring six-miler

I met my wife at Target on Saturday morning. It actually wasn't your typical we'll-go-separate-ways-and-meet-somewhere-later meeting.

She drove. I ran.

We did it once before, and it was enjoyable. But that was sometimes last spring. Don't know why we haven't done it since. I ran over the hill once again (I think from now on I'll call it The Hill, as it's earned its place among the Muddy Runner Lingo, uh, thingie...) but this time instead of running back over it and running home, I kept on running to Target. The store is about four miles from here on a straight shot, but I wanted to run longer so I zigged instead of zagging early in the run and took a two-mile loop.

That caused me to miss the drive-by. Last year Mrs. LB drove past me when I was at the very top of The Hill. But since she was already dressed and the girls were already dressed and I missed about 17 minutes on the loop, I figured I had missed them. And I did.

At the base of The Hill, I was doing very well with my time and HR. I can't remember my exact time but I was at around 2.8 miles and my pace, according to The Garmin, was at about 9:12. But The Hill can be very difficult and challenging. By the time I had gone over the summit (and actually by then I was in a different county, from Riverside to San Bernardino County... my cross-county run...) my pace was around 9:58 or thereabouts. I decided then that I wanted to shave as much time off of that as possible before getting to Target.

The bottom part of The Hill was tricky. I was on the northbound lanes, so the cars were coming up from behind. That side of the street has no sidewalks, and I was essentially running in the gutter (it was dry, which was good) because the part above the curb was all rocks and not much room anyway. The cars whizzed past me and I was quite anxious to get down to an actual sidewalk.

Once I did, I was moving at a pretty good clip. The one thing I haven't figured out about The Garmin is how to see your current pace as it only shows you the pace for the overall race. So it said something around the low 9:50s but I was moving faster than that right then and there.

It was a straightaway to the Target from then on. I was at the five-mile mark when I knew I could get to six so I made it a point of doing so. I had to run a tiny bit out of my once I got to the Target parking lot but I got to six miles. My time was 58:23, so that was good.

There's something about running one-way, of having a start line and a finish line that are different, that makes runs enjoyable. It's nice to run outdoors, I prefer that to the 'mill, but sometimes it can get mundane if you run the same route over and over again.

Mrs. LB has suggested driving somewhere, running, and then driving back home. I might take her up on the suggestion one day, but it seems that my time is limited enough as it is.

Still, there's something about a six-mile run where the finish line is six miles away that makes it a different kind of experience. I'm going to try and knock out a run on Sunday, maybe the same distance, maybe more, and it's going to have been today's enjoyable run that helped pave the way for that one.