Who else is loving this

Who else is loving this weather? Everybody raise your hands! I cannot wait for fall to arrive. The past couple days have just been a small taste of the goodness to come.

I went for a run last night, the first in almost a week thanks to my stupid crazy schedule and being out of town. I ran outside on the Gilruth trail, 3 miles, with my new heart rate monitor. The watch works fine; today I'm going to attempt to calibrate the footpod. I know I said I'm going to worry less about time and speed, and I am. But that doesn't mean I don't still like to measure it. What can I say -- I like data. So I'm looking at the data, but worrying about it less. Yep, that's possible.

Last night's run was especially interesting. I was so excited to get outside into the nice evening weather that I took off far too fast -- a 10:15 first mile! Whew. When I got into the second mile, the pace started to bite me and my legs started doing that annoying shin split/burning feeling that I'm far too familiar with. I had hoped to avoid that this fall, since I ran consistently throughout the summer, but apparently the shin splints are somehow linked to time of year instead of to anything that would actually make sense. (Can you hear my sarcasm?)

Anyway, mile 2 passed in a much slower 11:48 as I took a couple quick walk breaks trying to stretch out my lower legs. This is hard to do. There's not much in the way of muscle on the front of my lower leg, which is where the burning sensation radiates from. So there's nothing to massage or stretch. I just have to wait for it to go away.

The annoying discomfort had subsided by mile 3, which I covered in 10:30 as I pushed to the "finish line" in a total of 32:30. I had a good time, despite the extremely inconsistent pace. I'll need to work on evening that out a bit, I think! Tonight I'm running with Jose, so he'll keep me at a more steady clip.