Day 33: Variety Is The Spice

I've run for thirty-three days straight. In case you were wondering, that gets a little boring at times. I've run a lot of the same routes and sometimes it is that monotony that makes it hard to get out the door. The idea that I have to run where I just ran yesterday or the day before is more over-whelming than the idea that I have to tie shoes on my feet again. 

So tonight, I thought I'd try a few new things. First, I ran at night. This is a rare treat for me. Usually, this is the time I have just walked in the door from work or I am cooking or eating dinner. But I wasn't eating dinner tonight (because my husband and I had a late lunch date (thanks mom)) and I cooked dinner for my kids already and it was just staying warm. So I had the time for once to run after the sun had set. 

I've already mentioned it, but I love running at night. The weather is cool, the atmosphere is solitary, and also, just a little on the daring/eerie side. There are parts where it is so dark I really have to watch where I'm going so I don't fall. But I live in a city, so this really means there are just parts where the street lights are dim or shaded by trees. But it doesn't matter, this is the kind of "spice" I like in running. For some reason, running in the dark required greater focus, which is great because it's  like the greater focus takes your mind off the physical discomfort of parts of the run. 

Another new "spice" is the fact I ran to a park a few miles away. My hubby was headed there later, so I was just going to have him pick me up. This is variety because it took me on new paths and new streets. And while I basically knew where I was going, it still required concentration to make sure I took all the right streets and turns. It was also nice to see different parts of my city that I do not frequent. 

Lastly, the run had some variety because it finished on a "track." Now, this isn't a lap track or high school track, but rather a path/track that is the circumference of the aforementioned park. I don't particularly like track running. Now I say this prejudiciously because I've never really had a run on a track before. But it just seems so boring going round and round and round. But tonight, I trudged three and half times around the track. I saw the same people each time. While I didn't love it, it wasn't as bad as I thought, but I think that was because the track was just under a 1/2 a mile so it had some length to it. However, I do not plan on running on a track anytime soon. 

One other thing I did that was unusual, but not really "spicy" was I used both pieces of my running technology. I used my phone GPS because I can pause it at the street lights. I hate that waiting at lights counts against my pace time. But I still used my GPS watch, just to see how it tracked the run. And while it doesn't pause at street lights, once I downloaded it, it gave me my overall time (including street lights -boo) and it gave me my moving time, which incidentally was the same as my phone GPS. That was really good for me to know so that I can continue to rely on my watch more than my phone. 

This run was just what I needed on day 33, new surroundings, new timef day and new challenges- anything to keep this streak interesting, fun and spicy. 

 Watch GPS: notice it kept both avg. pace and moving pace

Phone GPS. One second difference on avg. pace when compared to watch.