I’ve been getting into the whole running thing a bit lately and last night I decided to take a chance and go on a run with a friend. I hadn’t gone for a run in a couple of years now, and I had never attempted a 3 mile run before; I figured that since I could comfortably do 2 miles I could survive 3. I was pleasantly surprised, though:
I basically pounded out a 5K in a little more than a half an hour. The time covered by the run includes both the minute or so at the beginning while my partner stretched, the minute or so when we ran into my friend’s mom who was supposed to be picking us up (sorry! we got to a late start!), and the three minutes at the end when we were walking through the snow up the dune until I finally called an end to the workout. I’ve got a 5K in two weeks, and since I know I can do that comfortably now, I’m going to focus on getting my speed up to about a 10min mile. It’s also solidified my decision to do a 10K for the River Bank Run in May instead of just the 5. Best of all, I wasn’t drop dead tired at the end, and I was only a little sore this morning from the run. Definitely an awesome start.
When we finished the run, my friend and I were rewarded with a view of Lake Michigan in the winter on a calm day:
It was so incredibly quiet and peaceful; if I weren’t starting to get cold, I’d have stayed a lot longer than I did. Our friend who was coming to pick us up post-run arrived, and commented casually that he may have ripped the lower half of his back bumper off his car in the snow on the way in, but that it was what it was and it was all on the other side of the dune. This was the peaceful, tranquil side. All the problems were on the other side.
We returned from the moment of zen on the dune to find his Jetta quite stuck. After several failed attempts to push the car loose, we called in his brother who brought a truck and a tow cable, which managed to free the Jetta, but the process of pulling the car in reverse with all the snow piling up behind the front bumper led to the front bumper being torn off in a slow, painful process. As someone who owns a Mark IV 2003 Jetta GLS, it was an extremely painful thing to watch.
It took about two hours, but we managed to get his Jetta loose, gassed up (because it was nearly empty by the time we had it loose), and one of the wheel well covers removed because it was hitting the tire. A story worth telling, to be sure. When I go do the run with him tomorrow afternoon, we’re parking our car on the street by the park.
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