My weekend of running

This weather this weekend just SCREAMED for me to go outside and run. So I did, both Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. Friday, I parked my car on the streets of Shandon and ran two miles (yay!). If anyone wants to join me for a neighborhood run, this is the place to start – Shandon has flat roads, shady trees, and each block makes it easy to keep track of your distance and set mini-goals for yourself. I also saw several people other people in the neighborhood either running, biking or walking their dogs. It was great.

Running on Sunday was a bad decision – maybe not the act of running, but the time and location I chose to run. I decided to run from my apartment to the med school campus – which is a little under a 1 ½ away. Great. I can do this. Before I went on my trek, I didn’t think about the lack of a sidewalk, and because of the rain two nights ago, the grass was still mushy. I didn’t think about the incline in the Hampton Hill area, and I didn’t think about how much traffic was on Garners Ferry and how the sidewalk on Garners Ferry is THISCLOSE to the road. Eek. My dad would have flipped out. But I pressed onward.

When I finally got into the campus, I was feeling like a survivor on one of those reality shows. If you haven’t been through the campus, it’s fairly large, and it has a lot of cool old buildings that make you wonder about the historical events that happened back in the day. There is a lot of land and several vacant old brick buildings that look like they were built in the early 1900s. There’s even an abandoned obstacle fitness course behind one of the lab buildings.

And then I got lost. Well, not technically lost – but I ended up going further than I originally thought I would. Did you know that the med school buildings and the VA hospital buildings are all connected? I kept trying to find an opening in between the two areas, but I kept running into dead ends that lead to loading docks, courtyards, and smoking sections. I even ran into (what I think was) the back window of the cadaver lab. Ugh, very frustrating. By this time, I just wanted to go home, but I was about 1 ½ mile away from my apartment.

I finally looped around the entire building … walking, running, walking, and running. And finally, I made it back home. I got into my car to see how far I went – 4.3 miles! Though I definitely didn’t run the entire time, I probably ran about 2 miles. It was an adventure, but I think I’ll stick with running in Shandon and the Riverwalk.