Running woes

I was running on my not so well functioning treadmill Tuesday. I wanted to get in an easy four miles before my shooting a baseball game.

After two miles, I felt my left foot start to brush something. I looked down and the treadmill belt is gradually folding over itself. I stopped the treadmill and looked at the belt. I couldn't believe the belt got a crease in it and started bunching up. I got out the tools to tighten/loosen the belt. I made a couple of twists on both sides and started the treadmill up again. I thought the belt would loosen and straighten out. It didn't. It did the opposite. It started to fold over and bunch more. I finally gave up and decided that there was nothing I could do to help it. By the time I got done fiddling with the treadmill, it was too late to continue my run outside before going to my assignment. I was a bit upset.

Since my treadmill is unusable until it gets fixed next Thursday, I decided to go to the local high school track to run. I picked the high school because no one would be yelling stupid comments to me, it is nice and smooth and I wanted to run on a track again. I get to the track and I looked up at the clouds. Storm clouds were moving in. The weather report said there was a 30% chance of rain. It looked about certain it was going to storm. I got on the track and started running. During my run, it got really dark, windy and started to thunder. It looked like it was going to blow over, so I continued running.

During the third mile it started to sprinkle. I absolutely hate running with wet shoes and socks, but this was hardly a soaking rain so I kept going. As I was running, the rain was changing to a harder rain. At almost four miles, I was getting drenched because it was raining so hard. I finished lap 16 (4 miles) and stopped. I walked to my car to wait out the downpour. Twenty minutes later it was still pouring. I wanted the rain to stop because I really wanted to run two more miles to reach 6 miles for the day. But it wasn't meant to be. I went home. After taking a shower and sitting down at my computer to do work is when the rain stopped and the sun came out. Just my luck.

This afternoon I went back to the track to run some more. I wanted to run 6 miles, but I wasn't so sure I would make it. The sun was out, it was very humid and my calves were tight. I ran 3.5 miles. I'm sure if I would have ran slower I could have gotten in 4 miles but I didn't want to kill my legs. On days like this, I would have been in the basement running on my treadmill.