Yesterday

Ran 5.01 miles in 44:53. It was cold!!!!!!!! Ran at a faster than normal Tues. pace because of that. Usual pace at Sulphur Springs is more in the 9:30 range because of the road surface and hills. When you first take off it's a gradual downhill for the first 1.5 miles. It's so gradual that you don't notice it until the turnaround point and start coming back and you're looking at the hills. In Texas you have to be careful because if there are wide shoulders and the motorists will use them as a slow lane to allow faster traffic by. I'm not complaining, I do it too, and everybody in the area that I run is very courteous about watching for me. The only problems I have had has come from a couple of women that are on the larger side and now I know that if I see their car coming I need to get in the grass because they are going to crowd me no matter what.

OK, gripe for the day time! My husband has been driving truck for 19 yrs and I've been driving for a little over 7 yrs. We try to keep a safe distance between the us and the traffic around us but sometimes it's not always possible to keep as much of a cushion as we would like. Yesterday we came through San Marcos during a busy part of the day and this woman drives onto the freeway and immediately gets in the middle lane. No problem except she does this directly in front of my husband and then decides that he is following too closely. Now keep in mind that the trucks we drive are governed back to 67 mph and we are in no way capable of exceeding the speed limit in most areas. She starts looking in her mirror and braking hard, there is no where for my husband to go, trucks are prohibited in the fast lane (and even if they weren't, there was traffic blocking that option), there is a steady stream of traffic in the slow lane now passing so he can't move over there. His only option is to back down and try to keep as much distance from her as possible yet try not to be even more of a traffic hazard than she is and signal to move into the slow lane and hope somebody will see what's going on and let him over. Well, she takes him down to 50 mph on a 70 mph interstate and then darts into the hammer lane in front of a line of cars that are doing more than 70. WTF was this woman thinking?!? 1. if you are afraid of the interstate traffic there are usually perfectly good frontage roads to use. 2. Stay in the slow lane if you are going to go slower than the rest of the traffic. 3. Don't move over in front of a semi and start braking hard. 4. Don't dart out in the fast lane and almost cause a multi-vehicle pileup. She wasn't even on a mobile phone so can't blame her idiocy on that. I wish I could say that this was not an everyday occurence but it isn't unfortunately. I'm not saying that it always happens to us but it is something we do witness at least once a day. By the way if you see a truck signalling to move over if it's safe to do so just back out of it a little to let us change lanes, it will only slow you down for a few seconds, I promise :-). Rant over.

gab