A Fogged Up, Rambling Sort of Blog Post

I've not been the best at getting my morning runs in over the last two months. However, I'm determined to do better, especially with summer's warm temperatures already here, meaning that if I don't get my miles in in the morning, I'm unlikely to at all. I've done a good job this week at getting up early on Monday morning for a run in Virginia Beach and then out for two morning runs on Wednesday and today.

Unfortunately on both Wednesday morning and today, I've woken up, checked weather.com, and found a Fog Alert. My York Haven route, with it's curvy, hilly, no-shoulder stretch of York Haven Road, can be scary in perfect weather. My other route, in Manchester, is annoying for morning runs during the school year. There's a lot of school traffic, and there's lots of pedestrians and kids waiting for the bus, which makes me feel like people are watching me. I know. Get over it.

So, on a day where visibility is a concern, my best option becomes loops around Cousler Park, just north of York. In the summer of 2008, I did most of my running around a 1.5 mile loop at the park, trying every day to run my two laps as fast as I could in training for 5Ks. Later that year, I started slowing the pace down a bit and gradually adding distance. As my runs more consistently were going 4-5 miles and taking longer, it became easier to run at a park closer to our house, even though it's hillier and doesn't have as many paths.

Aside from it being 20 minutes from home, I just don't like running anything longer than 3 miles at Cousler. It's not the park. It's me. I don't like running the same loop over and over again. At about 1.5 miles, it's short enough that I need several laps to get a good long run in, making it boring, but long enough that the laps seem to pass slowly. I'd much rather run a long out-and-back or 2 laps of a 3-mile loop than 4 boring laps around Cousler.

(In summary: If you're reading this and are from the York, PA area, Cousler Park is a really nice place to run -- it's just a bad fit for me and my picky route preferences.)

But anyway, I returned twice this week to my old stomping grounds. Wednesday's fog warning proved to be much ado about nothing. It was warm and very humid and gross, and between that and a little bit of a late start it was a struggle to just get 3 miles in.

Today's fog warning was the real deal, but it was a little cooler and I was a little more resolved to have a good run, and in doing so I discovered the exact combination of distance (5.5 miles) and humidity (100%) that renders a normally reliable iPod Shuffle almost completely nonfunctional*.



According to Garmin, this run, at 6.3 miles, was my longest run, since the comeback tour began and according to me, it's a good ending to my best week of running since a mid-December week when I logged 17 miles (13 of which was on my last real long run of the year).

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*It would randomly stop playing every few seconds. It seems to be working again now that it's out of the fog. Phew!

**I guess my Garmin knows that I'm just looking for an excuse to throw it in some body of water -- it functioned perfectly in the fog.