June 3

Total time: 10 minutes*
Distance: 0.89 mi

*I was SO CLOSE to eleven minutes, I should have just kept going, but I couldn't see my watch. When I stopped it, I saw I had maybe five more seconds to go and I would have hit the eleven minute mark. Alas.

I have this irrational fear about running at night. I live in probably one of the safest places in the country (one of the perks to living in the Midwest) but I'm still afraid I'm going to get mugged or kidnapped or something horrible. My usual trail is in a nearby park and runs through a heavily wooded area - it's nice during the day, but feels like the setting for a horror movie at night. So I've pretty much avoided it.

However, by the time I got home from softball (we ended in a tie - bummer) it was already getting dark. I waffled for a few minutes but, ultimately, I felt like going running. I decided it would probably be okay if I stuck around my immediate neighborhood, where there were lots of streetlights and people at home in their houses. So, that is what I did. I put my headphones on but left them around my neck and cranked the volume up, so I could still hear music without preventing myself from being able to hear anything else - it was really the only way I would have any semblance of time, without reaching up to make my watch light up every few seconds. I gave myself ten minutes, long enough to feel like it counted as a run, but short enough to not overtax my poor paranoid imagination.

I didn't particularly love it. I mean, I felt weird running on the street because I'm used to running on a path, but when I opted for the sidewalks, I had to be super careful since they have a tendency to be incredibly uneven and they weren't always very well lit, so I was kind of playing concrete roulette and hoping I didn't trip and fall on my face. Temperature wise, it was nice running at night - it hasn't gotten super hot here yet (KNOCK ON WOOD) but the evening was a nice, cool temperature that could accommodate a jacket if I wanted one, or I could have left it behind, and either would have been fine. I was far too paranoid about all the potential hazards (tripping, darkness, invisible muggers) to really settle down and just run - my brain was always somewhere else. I felt like I was running faster than usual and was tired sooner - though in the end, my pace was right about where it always is.

The moral of the story? I prefer to run in the daytime.