Sep 3 - p

FIT:

Visited my sister in college for labor day weekend. PB&J time (pooky bear and jennifer). There's a sweet series of trails right behind her dorm... like 30 feet away from the door. They're pretty diverse, too. It's a lot of single track, but with varying surfaces (sand, concrete, pine needles) and some tight, windy turns. There's elevation change and a mix of forest and creek.

These pictures are from last year (from my iPod), but at that time, I didn't know about the self-emailing Blogger feature, where you email a picture to a secret email address, and the picture will appear in a draft. So useful!

Speaking of iPods...

I wanted to test out a new Fuelbelt lumbar pack on this run.  Got it on sale for $4.  Anyway... packed it up with a granola bar and the iPod in the main compartment, and my phone in the side pocket, so that my sister could let me back in to the buildilng.  I set off.  I got to the far point after about 15 minutes.  Then, I saw a new trail that I could try to explore.  It went uphill, and the forest was taking over that part of the trail somewhat, since it was rarely used.  It was fun to explore, though.  I eventually got up to the top, which stopped at a university building.  I was curious what it was, so I circled around the paths a bit.  While I was running, I heard something fall... it was the crinkle of the granola bar.  Odd.  I put it back into the bag and zipped it up and ran on.  A few steps later, *crinkle*.  It had fallen again... wait a minute... no way did I totally miss the bag and zip it up.  Then, I noticed the huge hole... a massive hole... the whole underside seam had come apart... on the first run ever.  And the iPod probably landed with a light *poof* somewhere without me noticing.  I circled around a bunch and spent the next hour and 10 minutes running and later walking through the trails again.  Nowhere. 

Singletracks, going through the dense brush, steep slopes... not good news for the iPod.  I decided to give it up after retracing my steps several times.  Oh well.  Maybe someone else would somehow find it.  Maybe they'd need it more than I did.  Or maybe someone would try to return it.  Or, it's not the end of the world if I would've just lost it.  I did find 3 pennies in the next 24 hours... just had to find 3 pennies 7,500 more times.  One was heads-up, and one was SHEILD up!!!  You know those new 2011 shield pennies?  I wonder who was the first person to ever find a penny shield-side up.  Even though it's technically not the heads-side up, I think shield side up must be better, just because it's cooler.

The next day, I got an email from someone.  Turns out she had seen it, came back later and saw it again and figured that the owner hadn't found it, and it was starting to rain.  She had lost an iPod once and wished that someone had helped her get it back, and my dad had also written a touching inscription on the back of it.  So she went out of her way to get in contact and meet me to return it.  And she wouldn't accept money or cookies for the trouble.  So kind of her, huh?!?  Good people. 

Anyway, given the steepness of the trails and the stop-and-go nature of the run, I just called it at a 10min pace, to be conservative.  So maybe 6.6ish miles in 1:06:14.