Run #11 - May 26th, 2012

Today was a monumental day. After months, I finally solved a shopping cart mystery & I kept my pace under an 11 minute mile. I didn't think the latter bit was all that exciting, but my friends Bruce & Julia, who are more established runners than myself, are baffled by my consistency to always run an 11:06 ish mile. My pace doesn't seem to wavier. It doesn't seem to matter if am running 1 mile or 5 miles. But, what they are saying, is if I am running just a few miles, I should be going faster. Alas, this is not something I have learned yet in my running experience. At this point I am just trying to run as far as I can, without dying. So today, I was pretty impressed with myself for logging an average pace of 10:52 per mile. 

I have to be completely honest though. The extra speed in today's run did not come from a place of challenging myself, building motivation or even just growing athleticism. It came from a place of anger. 

You see, for the past several months, someone has been shoving empty shopping carts in front of my condo door. I have always suspected it was my upstairs neighbors, but they kept blaming me and my roommates for it, telling us we were junking up the neighborhood. We talked to some other neighbors, left notes asking people to please return their carts, but alas, they kept showing up in front of our door. 

I decided to wake up and go for a morning run today, since I would be packing to leave for Texas and running errands the rest of the day. But I also needed to pay my bills. So I decided to change up my route a bit, so I could run by the post office box in front of the grocery store nearby and drop off my bills. 

As I was crossing the street, I see my upstairs neighbor, pushing a shopping cart across toward our building. This is the same neighbor who blamed me and my roommates for leaving shopping carts around and insisted they never took shopping carts from the store. So right there, as I passed her in the street, I confronted her and said, "If that shopping cart winds up in front of my door, I will know who to blame". She looked a bit shocked at first, because I don't think she realized who I was at first, since the setting was out of context.

I spent the entire run fuming mad and wondering if that damn shopping cart would be there when I returned from my run. Wondering what I would say if it was. And apparently running faster than I had run before. 

When I returned home, the cart was there, but it was actually in front of their staircase and not our door for once. And by the time I had showered, the cart was gone. (And since I am actually writing this post several months later, I am happy to report, there have not been any stray shopping carts in front of my door since, although they are winding up in the parking lot now...)

Lesson Learned: Passionate running = faster running

Distance: 3.55 miles

Time: 38:33