Quickie: Lost in the 'Hood

What a crazy week this has been!!! I got two tickets, was in one accident, and bought a new car all within a one week span. However, the most memorable moment was getting lost during my six mile run in my own neighborhood. What was that you asked?? How does one get lost in her own neighborhood? Well, when you have absolutely no sense of direction and overly rely on technology it's actually quite easy. So here's how the story goes.

My wonderful husband purchased a Garmin 405 Forerunner as my gift for Mother's Day. If you don't know what this little doohickey does, allow me to explain. It is a GPS enabled watch that can be used to track your mileage when you are out biking, walking, or running. I use it for my outside runs. This particular watch has many bells and whistles. It stores your runs, allows the user to customize workouts, has an interval timer for speed work, and permits one to set his/her pace and race against a virtual partner. Oh, and it can be used as a heart rate monitor. This is just a brief overview of what this watch can do. It's fabulous!!

On this particular day, I charged up my little gadget, laced up my running shoes, gathered my liquid refreshment and walked out the door. But wait...I locked my house keys in the house with my cell phone. At this moment, I should have known that this run wasn't a good idea. It was one of those moments where I realized that my key was inside but continued to close the door anyway...it was like an out of body experience. I was in the Matrix. I ran to my neighbor, who was pulling out of her driveway, and asked to use her cellphone to call my husband. It took him about 20 minutes to get home and let me in. At this point, I was still determined to run.

After chatting with the hubby for a few, I hopped in the car and drove to my starting point. This particular trail was relatively new to me. I ran part of it the week prior with a gym buddy. We did about 4.5 miles but because it was supposed to be a six mile run I had to add some distance so I put in a turn. Now, this is where my Garmin 405 Forerunner comes into play. I figured, since the watch was going track my mileage that I would just turn around at the halfway point (3 miles). This is something I've done before, so no big deal, right??

The first few miles or so of the run were great. I ran a straight path, made a right turn down a street, reached my halfway point, turned around, and made a left turn to continue on that straight path. Well, that last left I made wasn't the left that I was supposed to make. I have no idea how it all went wrong, but it did. This was the first day of Richmond's triple digit temperature days. While it wasn't quite triple digits yet, it was starting to get hot as hell. Okay, back to the run...I tend to zone out when I run outside, so I didn't realize I made a wrong turn until I reached a fork in the road. I stopped and had a quizzical look on my face. Where the hell was I? I started to panic slightly because I just ran approximately 1/2 mile down a street and I had no idea where I was. I decided to turn around and run the 1/2 mile back to the point where I made the turn. At that point my shirt was dripping with sweat and I am extremely thirsty. On the way back I passed a woman watering her grass and was tempted to ask for a sip from her hose. I didn't think she would take it too well so I kept it moving.

When I reached the starting point I realized that I turned too early. If I ran down one more block I wouldn't have added an extra mile to my already long run nor would I have been so damn dehydrated. While, I will continue to run outside I will definitely pay more attention to my surroundings. Lesson learned!!

Peace!!