Country Roads, Part Deux

AM: 73 mins.
10 miles
PM: 4 miles
30 mins. walking around the driveway

This morning was a solid ten degrees warmer than yesterday, which put temperatures in the mid-30s at go time. Unfortunately the sky was spitting a misty drizzle throughout my entire run, which kept my face and hands sufficiently chilly when I was going into the wind. Unlike yesterday, when there were quite a few cars on the road, today it was pretty much just me and the cows. The peaceful solitude is quite refreshing considering I do 90% of my runs in the city.

One thing I was consciously working on during this run was my arm motion. When I worked out with Jeff last week, he noticed that I have a lot of across-the-body arm movement, which is pretty inefficient. Easy distance runs like today's give me plenty of time to focus on keeping the arms lower and minimizing lateral movement. Meredith said she used to have this problem when she was younger, to the point where her coach made her run with a stick in each hand so she could concentrate on not allowing them to touch. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

In the afternoon, my pops and I ventured into town for lunch and a matinee. We took in the new Will Smith flick "Seven Pounds," a romance/mystery/drama that walks the line between being depressing and majorly depressing. There's a scene in the movie where Rosario Dawson's character, who has congenital heart failure and has only a few months to live without a transplant, tells Will Smith's character that there's so many things she dreams of accomplishing and doing with her life. She lists the obvious things like traveling, having a family, etc., and then says, "I would love to go running. I dream all the time about what it must feel like to just be able to go for a run." Given that I spend half my time grumbling and complaining about pounding the pavement, situations like that (be they real or dramatized) certainly put things in a different perspective. And so, when we got home, Dad and I laced up the shoes and headed out for a double. And then ate some cake. It was a pretty solid day overall.

Oh, and I spent 30 minutes walking up and down the driveway talking to Jordan on the phone. It's not mileage per se, but it has to count for something.