Humble Beginnings (Kelsey)

So the other day, I went to the edge of town to drop off an application, and on the way home, I decided to set the trip meter to see how it would measure up to the distance of a half marathon. I even took the long way home. It ended up being 11.8 miles, and then the multitude of what I have signed myself up to do really hit me. 13.1 miles is kind of a long ways. Holy Moses.

I've been trying to lay my routes out because, unlike Stacey, I live in the suburbs and they don't have nice convenient one mile roads here. So I downloaded this nifty little ap, cuz I have an iPhone cuz I'm cool like that, and this ap has an odometer that measures the distance I travel, no matter my mode of transportation. I tested it out against my car's odometer first to check it's legitimacy, and it was accurate (assuming that my car's odometer is accurate). So this week, I've been doing some biking to find some running routes.

I am using the same training schedule as Stacey, (though I won't be running week 1 twice) and last night, I counted up how many times I do each route. We do 2 miles 6 times, 2.5 miles 4 times, 3 miles 20, yes 20 times, 4 miles 10 times, and 5 miles 3 times. All the other increments, we only do once. I have found my two mile and 3 mile routes. And I'm going to describe those routes, mostly so I can remember them :)

**2 Mile Route: A few blocks west of my house, there is this really pretty nature trail thing that I don't actually know the official name for. My family has always called them the ponds, someone else in the neighborhood called it the blacktop, I've heard it referred to as the wetlands, but I think it's more like Natural River Source or something like that. Anyways, it's this water irrigation system that is as pretty and interesting as we get around here in the 'Burbs. So the two mile route consists of me running a few blocks west, taking two laps around the pond, and running back on the parallel street on the south side of my block, going a block past my house, and wrapping back around to come back the way I left.

***3 Mile Route: (sidenote... whenever I leave my house to run, I always have to start by going north up my street. I can't start south. It just feels wrong). This route, I run north up my street, run a block east, and run a few more blocks north until I reach around the 1 mile mark. At this point, I run a block west up a huge hill next to an elementary school. I used to roller blade on this hill a lot. In fact, we called it "THE Hill," but going down was much more fun, so I'm sure I'm going to love myself for this uphill route. After the hill, I go south a block or two, west a few blocks, and south a couple more. It spits me out at the mouth of the ponds, so I'll take one lap around and run up the south side of my block again and end the way I did the second route, though I did discover that if I'm feeling a more scenic route, instead of running a street past mine, I can take a lap around the block of my best friend's old house instead. It faces out on a more busy street of town and passes what I always called "The Bubble Machine" growing up. It's actually just an old firefighting vehicle. It adds a little extra distance, but I feel like it will keep me more intrigued because passing a bunch of houses and yards gets boring. Bubble machines and ponds are much more exciting.


That's about all I have for today. Evidently, my 4 mile and 5 mile routes are still pending. Thank goodness for this ap :) Also, it should be noted, that simply biking these routes was slightly tiresome for me. And in 12 weeks and 10 days, I'm going to be running about twice the distance of all my bike rides combined, in one setting. This is going to be an adventure of the most tiring and exciting sort :)