Great Timing

My post about spontaneity could not have been better timed if I had planned it, because nothing about this evening's run went according to plan.

And I was 100% fine with it!

I was scheduled to meet Prabir at our usual time and in our usual spot for a 5 mile run. It had been raining off and on all afternoon and it wasn't clear whether we'd get rained out or not. Prabir ended up being caught up in a meeting at the last minute, so I offered to meet him at his work instead of at the Y as usual.

While I waited for Prabir to appear, I snapped a few photos.

Guess where? It'll be a Richmond Rave at some point.

Because we were starting in a completely new location, I had nothing planned when it came to route, so we just started running using the beep of the Garmin as it ticked off the miles as our guide. We decided early on to do just 4 miles, and we got there in a round-about way.

It was pretty cold tonight , but I enjoy a cold run. It was fun to mix it up and start somewhere new. And as always, Prabir had plenty of predicaments that he needed to talk out as we ran. I played my usual role of bitchy therapist.

Now we are watching GMU take on HOFSTRA. Mason in particular is finding the game very stimulating.

We're down by 1 point at the half. I think I need some Oreos to deal with this stress. HOFSTA is a 2-11 team!

Spontaneity = Good?!

For those of you who know me, you know that I am not a spontaneous person. Actually, I am the complete opposite. I am a planner. The type that I call "Planny Plannerston." I write a week of menus to inform my grocery list. I write packing lists even if I'm only going away to my parents' house for the weekend. I have a giant spreadsheet that I use to plot out our household cash flow and budget plan for at least the next 6 months. I schedule everything far in advance (October 2012 is already pretty booked).

You get the point.

If something doesn't go according to my carefully laid plans, I get very upset.

While planning can come in handy, my obsessive levels of plotting can also wreak havoc on me. I get very stressed if things aren't working out the way I planned. I fret and worry in advance if things are looking like they might not work out perfectly.

Believe it or not, I was NOT a bridezilla (but that's another story).

So why am I going on about this? Because my obsessive planning can really be a help to my running. And a hindrance.

For instance, yesterday I got my panties in a giant twist because the weather forecast is calling for a 30% chance of rain this Saturday - the day of the Virginia is for Lovers 14k. Obviously my plans for this race did not include rain. I then obsessively checked weather.com every hour to see if the forecast changed.

This morning I woke up and immediately grabbed my iPhone to check the weather forecast. Then I said to myself, "Kathryn, this has got to stop. You can't change the weather. Just let it GO!"

In an effort to tone down the obsessiveness, I tried to just let it go when it came to tonight's run. I had to bump my half marathon training plan by a week when I got sick earlier this month and was out of commission for a few days. When I transferred the weeks, I somehow missed this one - so there was (gasp) no Training Plan to dictate my running this week. I have the 14k this Saturday (as long as it doesn't rain, that is...) so I'm going to take it a bit easy.

Thanks to the lack of bossypants Training Plan, I decided that I wasn't going to try to aim for anything in particular this evening. No goal distance, pace, or pattern. If I felt like running 5 miles, I would run 5. If I felt like 3, I would run 3. I would run at whatever pace felt good without obsessively checking my Garmin to see how fast I was going.

Here are the results:

I also completely changed up my course tonight. This is a big deal for me. Usually I obsessively plot out my running routes on runningahead.com then commit them to memory before I set out. Once I had a 4 mile/5 mile/6 mile route plotted out, I stuck with what I knew.

Getting the Garmin has helped me embrace a little bit of spontaneity in my run, but usually it was limited to running on a street parallel to my normal.

At the start of tonight's run, I kept running into my arch nemesis, Red Light. I did not want Red Light to ruin my momentum again, so the third time I ran into one I decided that instead of waiting I would take a left and keep going into an area where there aren't nearly as many pesky traffic lights.

It was very refreshing to mix things up. I need to do it more often because I find things in Richmond that I never knew about before. For instance, tonight I discovered a Starbucks at Robinson and Stuart that I never knew existed. Good to know! I even decided to run through a park that I usually just run around.

So, lesson learned for the night? Spontaneity = good. Planny Plannerston can take a backseat sometimes and the world won't stop.