Spontaneity

On Tuesday morning, I decided to do something a little different. The weather has been pretty great in the mornings before it gets hot, so I’ve been taking advantage of exercising outdoors. I went to the 2.9 mile loop around Rice University instead of the gym or the Memorial Park loop which I do frequently.

The Rice loop is one of my favorites in Houston. It’s quieter than Memorial Park, easy to find a parking spot on a side street, and I really love being in a university setting. Makes me feel smarter? The path is lined with beautiful trees, you almost forget you’re in the largest city in Texas. I also love the backdrop of gigantic hospital buildings right above the trees.

Anyway, my legs were feeling great, the temperature was warm but not hot, and around the two mile mark, I realized there was a track right inside the campus. I have been looking for a track since about December when I realized my Garmin wasn’t calibrated after it told me I ran 14.4 miles during the half marathon I ran. Wrong! Many excuses of not being able to run at all, not wanting to find a track just to run two laps, and not being in running shape were reasons I never calibrated the watch. I knew it was about .1 mile off per mile, so it’s like reading a watch and telling yourself it’s 10 minutes fast and backtracking.

To stop my normal 2.9 mile loop and get to the track was a spontaneous decision for me (and tresspassing maybe?). I’m not a spontaneous person! I ended up running around the baseball field to get to the track, which was luckily unlocked. I ran one lap to calibrate and a second to check it. Worked perfectly. I actually liked running on the track. Now I get why people use it for speed.

Then I had to finish my loop and get back to my car. I thought walking/running through campus would be quicker than going back to the perimeter, but I didn’t really know where I was going. I think I ended up going an extra .5-.75 miles more than the perimeter would have taken me, but the campus was so pretty on the inside, I could see into classroom lectures, and the weather was great.

A nice spontaneous morning run!

As you can see, there are no pictures on this post (the top is an image I found). Maybe I’ll go back one day with my camera to take some pictures. But that would be spontaneous.

Tell me one spontaneous thing you’ve done lately.

I may be signing up for a four mile race on Saturday. Haven’t done it yet!