893 words about TheRoadLessRun turning 1 and other things

As of August 30th I have been blogging for 1 year. I forgot when I started blogging but thankfully the time hop app remembers things like this for me. I can’t believe I have had a blog for a year but at the same time I wish I had a blog for a lot longer. Blogging has been a huge part of my life the past year because I have relied on my blog as a way to reflect on my life, vent about things that stress me out or annoy me, and as a way to collect all of my random thoughts in one place. Oh, and also it has been a great way to make new running friends whether virtually or in real life.

I love blogging! It may not seem like I do lately because I have been going crazy with all of the projects I have for graduate school. As a matter of fact, I stayed up for an entire 24 hours this weekend because I was in “the zone” doing all of these projects. I took a nap after my Saturday morning Yoga class and after I ran and then I woke up and worked on my projects until noon on Sunday. I didn’t even realize it was Sunday for a very very very very long time. Then I went to bed and woke up around 7pm to run.

Phil opened the front door and found a package for me. Since I am not accustomed to receiving mail on Sundays this didn’t help me with understanding that somehow it had become Sunday. Apparently packages come on Sundays now, who knew? Not me.

The package was a pair of Altra shoes. I have never worn Altra shoes and I have always been a bit of a skeptic. Lately I have been having issues with my toes during long runs and I did a lot of research and discovered that Altra shoes have a wide toe box. I have been doing some longgggg runs and I plan to start doing A LOT more longggg runs in the coming weeks so I needed to find a shoe that would not destroy my toes on runs over 8 miles. I took these Altra shoes right out of the box and ran 15 miles in them even though the directions specifically say to gradually transition into running in these shoes by doing shorter runs in them at first. I did not follow the directions, are you surprised?? I am not a patient person, have I mentioned that? You may be thinking that I am now injured from not following the directions, I am not. I LOVED running in these shoes and I did not loose any of my 6 remaining toenails. I am not sore today either. I do not recommend doing what I did, they put a transition guide in the box for a reason. Will I run in the Altras today? No. I don’t want to tempt injury or soreness but I do LOVE these shoes so far.

I was able to negative split that 15 mile run starting at 8:26 pace and ending at 7:31 pace. I spent most of the run running around the university which is one mile from my house because it is lit up. While i was running I came to the conclusion that I am either getting really old or that I did not have enough fun in college because I just don’t get most of the things the students are doing these days. Its probably a combination of both. As much as I enjoyed college I don’t think I would enjoy being in college now. These students have reached a whole new level of ridiculous. The craziest thing I ever did in college was carry pigeons across campus in picnic baskets, for a research project of course, and now there are parties all over the place. Sadly, I can probably tell you where more college parties are now than I ever could in college but this is only because I run at night now and I can hear them. I was never a partier and I will never be a partier. I hate crowds because they give me anxiety.

Overall I have had a great year of blogging and a very exhausting weekend. I am nearing the end of the summer quarter and my first full year of graduate school. 2 more years to go! I spent some time in Princeton Friday working on a huge project for one of my classes. I have always believed in fate but I do even more now because something amazing came out of my project! I can’t wait to share more about that later on!!!! Cross-country officially starts tomorrow and my team has a scrimmage at home. We have 9 women on the team this year! This is the most women we have ever had and I can’t wait to see how amazing they all do.

I hope you have enjoyed following my blog this past year. I may have had a few good posts among the 200 I have published, surely at the time I thought they were all good. Looking back I realize some were a bit strange. I plan to keep blogging for years to come so I apologize in advance for all of the weird things I could potentially write. Thanks for following along!