Murphy's Law or LOST in the suburbs: I should... - Couch to 5K

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Murphy's Law or LOST in the suburbs

11 years ago•2 Replies

I should have known right from the moment I woke up this morning that today will be a special day that might not be perfect for running.

BF and me woke up at 7.50 am. He panicked, told me the time and I responded: "Don't worry! It's Saturday!" Ehm... obviously I was still dreaming (Murphy's Law #1).

I had planned to do my first run outside after two weeks of running on the treadmill and was quite nervous about it. I still think the treadmill is far easier than running outside so I was afraid I had lost some of my fitness. I usually run the same 5k route as it is difficult to find a route with few traffic lights but today I wanted to try a new route. I don't have to work this week and the weather is perfect so why not take advantage of this additional free time. I found a nice 6.7k route on google maps, put on my running kit (Murphy's Law #2: I chose the only knickers I own that are not staying where they are supposed to be...) and off I went.

After twenty seconds of running, my key fell out of my pocket so I had to stop and get it (Murphy's Law #3: New pants with too small pockets equals having to hold the key in my hand for the complete route). I continued slowly and was stopped again after 5 minutes by an old lady. She asked me for the directions and as I used to get lost in the park (it's not called park but urban forest. Nevertheless, I grew up in a rural area with lots of woods so I refuse to call those trees a forest!) in the past, I told her exactly how to get to the place she was looking for (Murphy's Law #4: Being stopped by someone).

Off I went again and everything was fine for about 15 minutes. My breathing was a bit heavy but I continued running. I crossed a dangerous road and everything was fine until I looked to my right: I was in the middle of grass land and there was a building that I hadn't expected to be there. It began to dawn on me that I got lost again (I tried another running programme last year, also wanted to vary my route, took almost the same route as today and ended up in the middle of nowhere, i.e. exactly the place where I ended up today so there was Murphy's Law #5: Getting lost (again) in the middle of nowhere without a mobile phone and someone around to ask for directions)

I continued running, stopped a few times to find out where exactly I was and even more which way I should take and then finally found one of the very few signs out there. I headed into the right direction (great improvement to last year where I chose the wrong one and ended up even further away from home), and ran along a street (several stops at crossings included) and found out I was close to my office (Murphy's Law # 6: Seeing the place where I work when I have the first holidays in 10 months...at least I didn't meet any of my colleagues.. Don't take me wrong, I like my job and my colleagues but not when I'm on holidays). Well, I knew where I was by then and ran a bit more until I simply was fed up with running and walked the rest of the way home.

I have no exact idea how far I ran but according to geodistance.com my total route was 7.1k and I think I ran at least about 6.5k of it. Not in one setting due to my orientation stops and not very fast. My stopwatch showed 47:03 minutes but as I didn't always stop it when I had to stop running, I think I ran for about 44:30 minutes so my time was 6.5k in 44:30 minutes is not very fast but I think it's ok under the circumstances.

I'm curious what else today has in store for me. I hope it won't get too bad