Wednesday shakeout

Bonus points if you know what this is

After much procrastination I finally emailed and met up with a local running club--actually had emailed two and after I couldn't make the first run coming up for the second one I never received an email back when I explained and asked was there any other time that they met up for group runs without having to wait another week.  Oh well, guess the person was being uber-cautious and while I can understand that, I'm not too impressed with not receiving any sort of reply.  The closest one made me feel welcome and I'm hoping that I can find a few people that I can run with on other days of the week besides the official group meetups for some easier workouts.  On the bright side, I ran 6.29 miles in 53 minutes on some pretty big hills during the Thursday run--felt good to be pushing a little harder than what I had been doing but I still need work to get back to last year's condition.  I also now have an England Athletics number so yay to reduced entry fees on certain races!  

Elsie the miniature schnauzer menace and I ran 9.5 miles Monday while exploring a new route, about 2 miles longer than what it should have been because I missed the turnoff on a bridle trail.  I even had a small copy of an OS map that I stopped to look at twice and still managed to get "lost". I still got to the other trail that led us back home just slightly further out than I'd planned, lol.  You would have thought Elsie would have been napping the rest of the day but she came home and started playing and wrestling with Ben and the partner, who says little dogs can't run distance???

A dog and her girl 

Yesterday the household stuff finally arrived from the states and I'm sore from carrying boxes and unpacking--29 out of 35 boxes are empty and even if everything is not put away properly it is at least in the room where it belongs.  Needless to say I missed last night's run after being on the go from the time the driver knocked on our door at 0715, yeah, that was a LITTLE earlier than expected.  Surprisingly after sitting on a dock or being in a ship for 2 months and 1 week everything was meticulous and still smelled like the sandalwood incense I like to burn. My partner said I should mention that it was due to his super mad skills in box making and packing that everything arrived intact.  It was slightly hilarious this morning realizing after so long with very little choice in what to wear that it was almost overwhelming having all my clothes available again.

Stocked up on Brooks trainers before moving 

I'm still sore from yesterday and today's weather started out horrible but Elsie and I were both needing a shakeout run.  It was so funny, there was rain pelting the windows, the wind was howling and my partner asked if I was sure I wanted to go out when the weather was so bad--my reply was "It's England, if I stayed in every time the weather wasn't nice I'd only run 2-3 times a month."  Slight exaggeration but not far off.  Anyways, we were almost two miles into the run and the sun came out and the world just seemed to glow, so worth heading out when it was so miserable mere minutes before.