If that's what it friggin' takes ...

I brought my run gear to work today, planned to run during lunch again, but a colleague coerced me to join him (oooh, my rubber arm!) Georgeous day outside but glad it became a little cloudy later in the afternoon. Hot blazing sun is not good for running.

And neither is a big heavy backpack.

I figured this was my penitence for not running at lunch. And of course, since the after-work run was impromptu and motivated by guilt, I had to figure out how to stuff EVERYTHING into the bag. If I had planned ahead, I would have not brought my purse full of useless things or would have brought a sandwich and not half my Tupperware collection. Add on top of it, a bottle filled with water. Fortunately, I realised how stupid that would be, to run with a very heavy water bottle in my backpack too, so I chug-a-lugged most of it, leaving just enough for drastic measures during the run. No blazing sun to fry me, but it was still plenty hot and humid ... 27C!

It took a lot of coordination and double checking before leaving the office. I realised as I was running up the long steep 1.5 km hill that it would have been much simpler to just go home and THEN run. But I figured this was for the better ... I wasn't hungry for once and had psyched myself up to run, heavy bag and all ...

It's like when I run marathons and I know I haven't trained nearly enough. No, I don't cancel. I'm just too psyched already to do it and since I don't really care about time, but rather just love the whole experience, I can always count on me to pull through to the finish.

The mind is stronger than you think.

Ottawa Marathon Training - W6, Day #2

Planned run: 10 km
Actual distance: 6.5 km

I cut the distance tonight in preparation for tomorrow's hoped-for run ... Wish me luck!