Why?

I ran outside in the park tonight, risking the last minutes of my workout being in the dark; pushing the limits of daylight preferable to running my scheduled intervals on the treadmill again. It feels like I have been doing too much of my hard running on the treadmill lately, as tonight it felt tough to pick my feet up and lift my knees to get my turnover to match how fast I wanted my legs to run. Running hard on the treadmill still counts, I think, because I'm still moving my legs and my heart's doing the work too, but keeping up with the belt moving below and powering my pace on the pavement myself are two very different feelings. It was also quite chilly, the "feels like" being in the mid-20s and once the sun disappeared behind the line of forest nearby, "feels like" began to feel even colder, which did not help my tiring legs churning as they tried to dip below 7-minute pace. By the end, my hands were burning with cold even tucked in their gloves, which was distracting and uncomfortable.

The cold kept the population at the park down, but a couple times I passed a dad and his very young son walking their equally-young dog. When I was in the midst of my second 1200m interval, the little boy asked me, "Why do you run?", dragging out the last word so it sounded like "ruuuh-uhhhn?" I was well past him before I came up with an answer I never got to tell him:

Because I want to.
Because I can.

Week # 5

Summary for week ending Sunday, January 31, 2016:

Number of workouts: 7
Total miles run: 44.11
Average miles per run: 6.30

Miles in January: 184.42
Miles in 2016: 184.42

Toward the end of the week I was able to get off the treadmill and get outside, which was quite a relief. Saturday I did the first tough running of the year (first hard running since Des Moines), 4-minute hard intervals sandwiched between a couple warm-up and cool-down miles; Sunday was a perfect day for a medium-long run (12 miles) with sun and light breeze at 50F. Despite the tougher run the day before, I felt very good today; one of those runs that will go in the books as truly great. In the middle of the run, hundreds of Canada geese came soaring to the reservoir I was running around, swirled noisily over the water for a few minutes before settling onto the lake's surface. I was glad when they finally dropped out of the sky, as the risk of being hit by a goose bomb was considerable, there were so many flying above. They honked and squawked and splashed such a ruckus; seemed like every goose in the state of Delaware must have been there, but after about half an hour, another squadron sailed in and stirred up the hundreds already on the water. A group of sea gulls was banished to the railing on the bridge to the control house, and the ducks that had been there first vanished completely. I'd never seen such a thing.

A woman walking her dog asked me, "Will you run a mile for me?" so I dedicate mile #4 to the lady wearing the Wilmington University sweatshirt, walking her dog with her husband.