Progress: I'll take it, I guess.
I've been having some solid distance training this week. Wednesday, I started pushing my race paced runs up into the 5 mile range and then today I had a 9 miler that averaged 9:39/mile. RunKeeper brought to my attention that this was a personal best pace for that distance which led me to check through some of my other long runs to compare. Looking at my 7-10 mile runs that I've tracked with RunKeeper, my pace has steadily been going down from averaging 11:15 - 11:30 minute miles back in October and now getting down about two full minutes faster per mile. It's certainly no prize winning pace, but it's a sight better than what I had been doing.
On my 9 miler today, I saw two separate places where someone had let their dog void their bowels on the sidewalk and didn't even attempt to pick it up. Generally, I get it; picking up animal feces is gross and I wouldn't want to do it either, but that's part of why I don't have a dog right now. It just comes with the territory. It's one thing if it's in some grass or the street, but right in the middle of the sidewalk - the very name of which indicates that it's a place where people are regularly putting their feet - you need to pick that up.
Luckily, it was nice and sunny when I was out running and I was able to dodge the obstacles, but I feel bad for whomever comes through there once the sun has gone down and they get an unpleasant surprise. This may not seem like a big deal, but I find it rude. I also saw an actual article in an actual newspaper where someone was complaining about kale and saying kale seemed self-righteous, so my grievances come off far more dire given that comparison.
Also, I hope that if any of you had interest in running The Bear this summer that you signed up quickly, because this year filled up in under two hours apparently. I thought 48 hours was wild enough, but this is getting to be ridiculous. Hopefully if it gets more selective in the future, it will help that I've run it a few times before, but who knows what will happen; 800 people just isn't a lot for a race. When I was checking the site recently, I happened to catch this line in the description,
"You will finish at the top of Grandfather Mtn (over 5000 foot elevation) where you will be greeted by thousands of fans who have no where to go as they await the last runner."
Which I thought was both pretty hilarious and also pretty exaggerated in terms of the number of people up there, but I'm also not expending a whole lot of thought on counting bystanders by the time I get to the end of that bastard.