Nicole feels

Our neighborhood consists of two main loops, a smaller one within a larger one. One way in, one way out, which is great, since the last two homes we owned were on very busy roads.

It also makes for a nice track. In the fall, I drove around each loop and logged the distances. When I started running and walking outside last week, I couldn't remember each distance, but I did remember that both loops together equal 1.25 mile.

I made the assumption that the big lap was a mile and the small one a quarter mile, though I thought perhaps the small loop was a bit farther than that. Nonetheless, I've been using those distances to calculate my rate and time.

This week I started running the small loop twice and the big loop once. Figured it was just under 1.5 mile. By today I was pretty frustrated because not only had I lost a minute of time each day, meaning I am getting slower and not faster (how's that for redundancy?), but the time per mile was dog-slow.

(Dog-slow...dogs really aren't that slow, so where did that phrase come from?)

Anyway...

I decided to re-measure today. I drove around the small loop first. .4 mile! And the big loop is .85 mile. Now, while that might not seem like a big deal to you, this means that I've been running 1.65 mile all week instead of 1.45. Not only do I get to log .6 more miles so far, but my time isn't as awful as I thought.

Even if it has slowed down each day.

Hey, I pulled a muscle in my left upper thigh and it hurts, okay?

So, my daily distance this week has been 2.9 miles a day.

The only bad part? I get to move up to 2.1 miles of running next week (twice on the big lap and once on the small one).

Oh, goodie.