Oops!

I failed to run last night, but I have a number of good excuses as to why not. Not buying it? Darn.

This morning I managed to get out of bed early enough to put in my 5 miles. I drove to the gym but decided to run outside, so I headed towards the MSU campus. Only three people were awake on the entire campus – two landscapers and an unhappy professor - so it was pretty quiet for the first 45 minutes.

There is a huge rock on campus that different student groups spray paint with different messages during the year. Today the rock was all white and in red and blue it said “9/11/01 – We will never forget” and there were hundreds of miniature flags in the lawn behind it. Very cool.

When I was a half mile from the gym, I stopped at a cross road to wait for the little blue man to light up indicating that it was safe for me to cross the street. Waiting to turn left onto the street I was crossing was what I assume to be a young, inexperienced, under caffeinated, late for work college kid. I made eye contact with him as I was starting to approach the road so he knew which way I was going, and he nodded as if recognizing my intentions and giving me the ‘go ahead’ – then when I was in the MIDDLE of the road, he suddenly turned and I had to jump out of his way. Surprisingly, I did not chase him down, yell at him or flip him off. Shocking, I know! Seriously though, if you see a runner crossing the road and you make eye contact with them and you nod your head acknowledging they are crossing and non-verbally saying that you will wait for them to be out of the way before turning, THEN LET THEM CROSS THE STREET WITHOUT PUTTING THEIR LIFE AT RISK. If the guy wouldn’t have made eye contact and nodded, I would have just waited for him to turn or signal me to cross. Arg.

Saturday I’m scheduled to run 10 miles, but am hoping I feel good enough to run 11. Then next week I’ll run 12 and the following week will be the race. I think I’ll stick to back country roads where the biggest threat is a herd of cows!

Run in Review:
Miles: 5
Pace: 12:00