Good Morning all,

I did another 30-minute run, having only intended on going 1.5 miles, but once I’m there at that 20-minute mark I’m bound to keep pushing to the end. It’s almost becoming a game with me. If I tell myself that I’m only going to go so far, I usually end up finishing it up to the 30 minutes. I have no idea why this keeps working. lol

I just looked at my Running Ahead log, and I can see how my pace has picked up over the course of the past 10 weeks (even after considering that my C25K pace calculations included the walking portions). If I had been doing One Hour Runner, I’d have just ended my first week, except that I had done 45 minutes my first day last week. I’m happy to be able to run on my own terms, but still maintain the standards OHR upholds for progress. It’s not to say that one day I’m not going to do a 20-minute run if I’m not up to 30, or I won’t do another 45-minute run prematurely. But I get to say what I do and when I do it, and the freedom keeps me running.

I truly believe that had I committed to the OHR program for 10 weeks, I’d have already quit. Don’t get me wrong, I like running, but the C25K was enough to introduce me to running, and now I’m going to run because I want to, it keeps me fit and has been improving my heart, not because a schedule tells me to. I may do times that are similar to the plan’s, but it’s going to be on my own.

Okay, enough of the soap box. I just feel passionate about having the freedom to do what I want on the days I want. So far it’s been working.  :^)

Yesterday I picked up 9 bags of leaves from our front lawn. There are sycamores planted up and down our street, and many of the trees’ leaves inevitably come to our property, along with snow, rainfall and loose recyclables that fall when the truck empties the cans. It turns out that since it had rained/sleeted the day before, the leaves were nice and wet and tended not to fly around and set allergens flying. I did it all in an hour, and it was good exercise, too. The bags were nice and heavy, and I had to carry them to the back of the house. This was a fortunate thing, because later in the day, when I was supposed to be doing my run, I spent hours on the phone with a family matter and couldn’t run.

My sister and I spent two hours doing a NaNo sprint yesterday evening. It’s 10 minutes writing, 10 minutes not writing, for the duration. I got to increase my count, which you can see on the sidebar, and my story got to move along a little further. I’m not giving up hope that I can get to 50,000 words by November 30th, no matter how naive that hope is.  :^) We’re planning another sprint tomorrow night, which is also my mom’s birthday.

♦♦♦ HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM! ♦♦♦

Tomorrow’s Friday, so everyone have a good weekend!

Shannan