Damn you Parks and Recreation!

I have a big win I'd like to share with everyone! I actually got up at the butt crack o' dawn to go do my usual (not so often) run of the loop. This trail is a kick your butt, up hills, gravel, dirt, and concrete kind of run. It's not easy and it's about 3.54 miles according to my pedometer. For the past 3 months or so my hang up with going is that my old mp3 player busted. No music=no running. That was excuse numero uno. Now that I have a brand new shiny little ipod nano I didn't have that excuse anymore. Last night when I was getting all my running stuff together I realized how shoddy my shoes were looking and thought "It's not good that I'm running in these old shoes anymore. They scrape up the backs of my heel, they're no longer comfortable, aaaaaand they look like crap." Excuse numero dos.

However, this time I made a right choice and went running anyway despite my feet yelling at me the whole time. Ya it hurt, but so what? They'll thank me later when I get my tax return and a brand new pair of shoes from Snails Pace.

All was going well for the first 3 miles of my run... I was jogging along to the tunes of Chevelle, BEP, Foo Fighters, and Michael Jackson when I was stopped short by a big green gate at the top of the hill. WHAT?! Now mind you this gate is supposed to be unlocked and swung wide open from the hours of sunrise to sunset. What the hell was it doing closed at 9:45am?! And on a Saturday?! With no entry up into the hills, and the favorite part of my run (it has a kick ass view of the top), this meant that I had to run all the way around the golf course adding an extra mile and a half! (You bet your ass when I got to my car I drove back the way I had run to see how much farther that damn closed gate made me go.)

So after about a 30 second hissy fit and a quiet chuckle at the girls who were trying to climb over the gate I kept on trucking down the hill instead. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought! Aaaaaand I did the whole loop in under an hour, which ain't bad for not having been active in over 3 months.

The lesson: Sometimes the harder way isn't so hard after all. It's as hard as you make it. So take the stairs instead of the elevator and dare yourself to park farther away from the store when you go shopping.

And there was a bonus for running farther down the hill... Garage Sale. :-)

The view I didn't get to see today thanks to Fullerton Parks and Recreation. Lazy asses...