Walked home from the bus stop, walked Max, and that’s about it. Just the way I like it.

Thinking ahead to tomorrow’s 7-miler, I am feeling comfortable about covering these middle distances now. It looks to be in the 40s and possibly rainy when I plan to be out on the trail on Saturday. Thinking about this for some reason brought back memories of winter running in high school. Back then you wore running tights underneath shorts, and a cotton turtleneck underneath a cotton sweatshirt.
At my high school there was the dreaded “loop”, a .9 mile run along the paved road that encircled our campus. Varsity sports teams would be timed on the feared “2-loop” time trial. The loop seemed like such a huge distance for me, a chubby short Asian girl who was mediocre at sports. Now it’s a simple warm up, or basically equivalent to my walk to or from the bus stop (the bus stop walk includes an enormous hill that, when I first moved to the hood 7 years ago, was also dreaded)
The other running route was the “dog pound”, which I think was a loop plus an out and back into town, where the ‘out’ destination was, indeed, a dog pound. I guess now you call it an animal shelter, but there were barking dogs rooting for you as you made the turn back to campus. This, if I recall, was 1.5 miles. Gulp.
Funny to think about all of that, 20 years later. Crap. 20? Crikey.
When I reflect on this, I’m just very grateful to be in the category of people in better shape now than in high school. It’s kind of more important now, what with keeping up with the kid and such. I’m not exactly athlete of the year, but at least a mile run no longer fills me with dread.

Can you make out “the loop”?