Seven on the Roads

I had a seven-mile run on the books to run today, and for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to run said seven on the roads. I don't know why I thought that would be best. But it is what I did. I parked at Bowdoin and headed out down Middle Bay Road to Rossmore, and looped back on Maquoit. There some nice views of the salt water marshes and the ocean along Rossmore, which was nice, and I got a good look at a Kingfisher who was sitting down by one of the tidal rivers along the route - such neat looking birds! But it was on the roads, it was flat and it was windy (in all directions... how does that happen?).

As I was coming up on the last mile, I was thinking to myself, why is this feeling hard? Is it a) because I am running at a faster pace than last week's 6 miler on the snowmobile trails, b) because I am more tired (I'm a bit stuffy today, and Sam appears to have finally gotten Ryan's cold (or perhaps another cold strain) and is super congested, meaning she was up a lot last night), c) because I am running on the roads, or d) all of the above. I definitely went out a bit too fast, and around mile 4 realized I was dragging a bit. I wouldn't call this run an evenly paced one, but in the end, I managed to hold it together and finish the 7 miles in 1:01:42. This isn't much slower than I probably would have been running on the same loop two summers ago when we were training for MDI, so I'm pretty happy with that. But somehow I'm sure I would have had a much more enjoyable hour out if I had been running on the trails! Next time :-)

And although Sam is congested, she is still a pretty happy little girl, thank goodness! Here are a few shots from yesterday to prove it :-)


Mmmm... hand...


Look at me, I'm cute! :-)