On Timing

The legs are pretty sore from two days ago, but definitely in a good way. Anyway...

In high school, I used to think that if I didn't have time to run at least three miles, it wasn't even worth bothering. That made more sense then (when classes ended before 3) than it does now, when 4 weekdays out of 5 I only have an hour-long break (or less) between classes. Plus piles of homework that take much longer than 4 years ago. Also, I don't feel comfortable going out into Boston/Cambridge when it's dark, so it's tough to figure out when to go. Luckily it's spring now, so daylight is more plentiful.

Unfortunately, spring also brings some tricky weather of its own. Today there was a flash thunderstorm right before I was planning to go out, but it was sunny again by the time I got home from work. The problem with having only an hour to go out, though, is that a 3-mile run with a shower at the end cuts it very close and I have to rush. So, I decided that I would jog to the track, time running a mile as fast as I reasonably could (so I can see where I'm starting from and how much I improve later), then jog back. Unfortunately, the track is only open to the track team from 5-7. Ugh. So I ran back home again, not wanting to just jog around without knowing how far I was going.

So the benchmarking will probably have to wait until the weekend. A lot of my free time between classes has to be spent in lab nowadays, since I have a beast of a final project to finish before May 13. Thanks to Gmaps Pedometer, though, I discovered that I actually did run a mile today. We'll see how it goes when it's timed and official.