Recalculating Route

A good friend of mine (hi, Jay!) relates the amusing story of what happens when he and his wife are driving and they ignore the directions given to them by their GPS Navigation system:

GPS System: "prepare to turn left ahead . . . prepare to turn left . . . turn left now . . .PLEASE, turn left now!"

(Jay and Nancy continue to drive straight)

GPS System (maybe a little grumpily): "recalculating route..."

They find it hilarious that rather than saying "Idiot, you missed the turn," the pleasant female computertron voice simply bleats out "recalculating route" with the sunny optimism of technology that will solve your life's problems no matter how hard you try to trip it up.

In fact, when life throws Jay and Nancy an unexpected and potentially unpleasant curveball—a curveball that requires that they change their approach to a problem or situation—one of them will sometimes turn to the other, smile wryly and repeat the mantra: "recalculating route."

I am recalculating my route today. As any runners who are reading this blog probably could have told me, the idea of trying to run six days out of seven after an extended layoff was maybe a wee bit optimistic (particularly given the toll it's taking on my 40-year old body). As such, while I plan to stick with the fitness plan (I'm already at the point where it feels like it'll stick, and I'm enjoying it besides), I am going to throttle back a tad on the schedule. To wit, something like this in each four-day stretch: short run, brisk hike, long run, day off. This will give my body a chance to recuperate a little from the pounding of the pavement, while still ensuring that I'm doing something healthy most days.

I am also literally recalculating some of the runs I did earlier this week. I thought the high school track was a quarter-mile, but based on my last two days of road running (which I've been measuring with my car's odometer), it's definitely less than that. Probably more like 1/5th of a mile, which means that when I thought was running three miles in 27 minutes (9 minute miles), I was actually running 2.4 miles in 27 minutes (11:15 miles). That jibes a little better with my times and distances of the past two days.

Anyway the main thing, as far as I'm concerned, is to build up my endurance. So today I went for a long run in Griffith Park, an enormous and mostly-wild LA City Park that has several entrances within a five minute drive of my apartment (my Mount Hollywood hikes have been in a different part of it).

From the park's website:

With over 4,210 acres of both natural chapparal-covered terrain and landscaped parkland and picnic areas, Griffith Park is the largest municipal park with urban wilderness area in the United States.

In one section of the park there's a long, mostly level bike path on pavement with a dirt running path next to it that appears and disappears. Still an occasional car going past, but much better than the street running I've been doing.

I set my pace to be very easy, because I wanted to see how long I could go.

The result: 47 minutes; 3.7 miles. A pretty leisurely amble (that's not even five miles an hour), but after a long sabbatical followed by three straight days of running, a long jog with no break for 47 minutes is nothing to sneeze at.

I'll take it. It's doing my body good.

Sick of running talk yet? Me too. And I promise this blog will rarely be about running from now on.

In parting, I'll leave you with this thought:

How COOL is THIS???        :)