Rhapsodies

Well it’s been almost exactly a month since my first “jog” and not counting a week of being floored by something seasonal and nasty after my first week I’ve been keeping at it pretty steady.

I changed two things after the first day around Greenlake. First while I’m sticking to the same basic route I’m using the road around the park and not the park itself, no more dodging joggers for me. Second I had an exercise app, called Runkeeper, recommended to me that not only times my ride but, using the phone’s gps, also monitors my speed, distances, route and calorie burning.

This has helped me quite a bit it tells me how well I’m doing and pesters me if I don’t do a workout after two days. So now I’m doing approximately 9.15 miles around Greenlake (this includes getting there and going home) three times a week (I quickly realized that since I still commuted on the bike there was no need to kill myself doing it every morning) I average around 39 minutes barring certain factors like traffic and traffic lights (i’m occasionally tempted to use the pause button when I’m stopped at a light but I’d probably forget to turn it on again) Runkeeper can be quite ruthless about what it records this is sometimes confusing (I don’t know how I break elevation records when I’m doing the same route every morning) and sometimes frustrating (the only reason my best distance is 9.41 miles is because I had a late start and couldn’t make my usual final right turn in rush hour traffic)

But today felt like a particularly great hurdle. I made my best time in this entire month. I admit that a good time is dependent on not being caught by a certain red light on Ravenna Blvd (or getting an early enough start that the traffic is light enough to ignore it) but even by that standard this one was sweet. After doing the same route for a while you begin to memorize the five minute points that Runkeeper will tell you you’ve crossed. On my route the first mark is usually somewhere before the corner of Ravenna and Woodlawn Av and for the last month I’ve yet to do .8 miles whether I got caught by that damn light or not… Today I did 1.2!

It got better from there. Sometimes I passed a traditional five minute point by so much I was almost certain Runkeeper had stopped working (for once I wasn’t being neurotic. I’d put in my iPhone into a pocket that was getting jostled a lot. In fact it was messing with the audiobook playlist I was listening to enough I had to turn it off so it was a possibility.) And in the end I finished my route in 37.4 minutes a record! and probably one that’s going to be hard to beat. So forgive me as I crow, I’m psyched!

Oh yes… I also saw a rabbit.