Another Dirt Road, Another Heliport, Another Run

I woke up this morning with stiff calves, not feeling well, and feeling tired. I chatted with a friend on Instant Messenger and fully believed it was going to be a day in bed watching a movie.

I was wrong.

After laying around I thought cleaning the house might be enough moving around to loosen my legs. I wiped, vacuumed, loaded the dishwasher, cleaned the floors, two bathrooms, dusted.... felt a little more energized. Then, I ate my gluten free Envirokids Rice cereal. More energy. I ran two errands. Then decided, I needed a run. I figured I'd stay slow and if my calves hurt too much I'd turn around.

I was anxious to try out a dirt road North of a Heliport on base. I parked in the grass, got out my ipod and took off around 2:19pm. It was hot but with forests on both sides of the deeply rutted road, I hit shade on/off. My calves were still tight in the beginning but started to loosen up. Unfortunately, around a half mile in my foot hit a tire rut and my ankle turned quite a bit. Scary. It felt a little achy and immediately sore but I could walk on it right away. I decided to run and found out that it actually felt better running, but was noticeably sore when I walked. So I ran.

I got to where the road splits right and left, took the right because I had driven it before and knew finishing it and turning around would give me 3 miles total. This leg of the road had quite a bit more shade and ended at the heliport. Blackhawks roared overhead and I stopped to watch them take off and land for a minute or so.

On the way back, it was really starting to feel hot and I was needing a drink. A lizard sprinted in front of me: show off. The darkened woods around me looked cool and deep but like a mirage, pretty inaccessible as they are really overgrown and thick. It's a shame the military can't make more dirt paths with the mileage of forest on this base. - Especially since PT is a really big deal to the Army.

I started to walk on/off. My calves had completely worked out the tightness but my ankle was starting to stiffen. I walked a good portion of the last 1/2 mile and returned to my car at almost 3pm. Wow that was almost a 40 min run and might have only been 3 miles. I either really took my time walking and staring at the helicopters as they flew overhead or maybe it's a little farther than I thought. I didn't get a good mileage check in my car when I drove it a few days back.

This is a PERFECT run for midweek. I will definitely use it again and learned my first off-road lesson: watch the ground or twist an ankle. Noted. Duly.

When I hit that fork in the road I was really missing my Timex Ironman Speed + Distance watch that died. I'm hoping to purchase the Garmin Forerunner 405cx. It doesn't seem to need an arm unit, looks more like a normal watch (hated the previous forerunner options), and seems to get good reviews. Need to read a little bit more about it first however, so I'm off to do that now!