W9D1 Run. Finally.

5K of silence but for the passing cars & my breathing.Alone w/the sounds of my footfalls & thoughts for a woman missing sweet baby tonight.

I finally managed to get the W9D1 run done tonight. I was not sure what to expect since I had not ran since Tuesday morning. I know, that's not even 4 full days between runs but, hey, I'm a baby runner. I've been following the C25K plan with 3 running days a week (except when I was injured / sick). Maybe I thought I would backslide running just 2 days this week.

What a feeling to learn that's not so. Tonight's 5K was even easier than my accidental one last week. I ran the same route and did not have the problem on the upslope. Tonight was also the first time I ran without the heart monitor -- it was great not having that restrictive band across my chest. I confess, the heart monitor was my security blanket in many ways. I was never good at judging pain and listening to my body so I was worried about overdoing it in the beginning. The heart monitor was a way for me to gauge my effort so I don't keel over dead on the street :)

Without the distraction of checking my heart rate, I must have fallen into an easy pace and kept it up the whole run. I finished the 3.13 miles almost 30 seconds faster tonight!
Time: 36.43
Distance: 3.13 mi
Steps: 5505 *** seems I increased my stride from 35" to 36" for this run; progress!
Pace: 5.11 mph (11.44 min / mi)

It was a quiet, cool night for the run. I hit a nice pace and was able to think about the day. It was a busy day --- make that a crazy week. Ended the day with humane euthanasia of a dog with an inoperable tumor that had finally compromised her quality of life. We knew the day was coming; actually thought it would come sooner than today. The diagnosis was made over a year ago but we were able to maintain good quality of life for her with pain management. In many ways, she lived as though nothing was wrong --- "ignorance" is a blessing for our patients --- until the tumor got too big and impaired her bodily function. Much as it saddened us and pained her human companion, it was time for farewell.

We can prepare all we want, make our checklist of things to monitor, etc... but I've come to believe that it's almost impossible to ever be ready for that moment. And that there's never a right time. Just because it was time does not necessarily mean it was the right time. How could there ever be a right time for something like that?