Four miles into my planned twelve-mile run today, I returned home and had to explain to Sweetie what had gone wrong. “I made an error.” I had absent-mindedly left the cotton boxer shorts I had slept in on under my running pants. It’s been almost three years since I’ve run with any cotton touching me. Cotton is awful for running. It holds water and it chafes. Boxer shorts are probably pretty terrible for running too. Anyway, about two miles into the run, I noticed something was up and figured out what the problem was. I made it back to the house without any damage being done. The synthetic stretchy briefs I changed into felt great after that.
I was experimenting with carrying my Android phone with me during the run and using some software — Instamapper — to allow Sweetie to track my position in real time. It worked pretty well for most of the run, though I seemed to lose data connectivity for the last mile or so. The phone is also a little clunky to carry in a pocket when you’re running. But it’s a fun thing to try. Maybe if I resolve the carrying issue, I’ll open it up and let everyone get real-time updates when I run Eugene in May.
The GPS tracking put the pressure on me to pick an interesting route, since I knew someone was watching. I ran on a bunch of roads I’ve never run on before, most notably the section of SWTrail 3 between Oleson and 45th. Since I was making up the route as I went along, I didn’t hit the twelve miles I was looking for on the nose; I ended up running 12.76 miles according to the Garmin. (That’s right. I’ve got a Garmin GPS unit on one wrist, and a Smartphone running GPS tracking stuff in a pocket. In another pocket, I’ve got a radio, since naturally they couldn’t put an FM radio in a Smartphone, no. It’s ridiculous.)
Adding it up, that’s 41.6 miles this week, unless if I tack on a few more tomorrow, which I probably shouldn’t. Milestone: this is the first time I have ever run 40+ miles in each of three consecutive weeks. Next week: conservative (and fewer/shorter) weekday runs to prepare for a 24-mile trail run on Saturday.