The Beginning and the End

Just about every week I'm still getting out one weekend morning to practice the old left-right via walking/running, and calling it my "long run." In that spirit, I'm trying to extend both the running portion of the outing and also to increase the speed to accomplish the transition from "short jog." Yesterday, Sunday, I covered 7 miles with relatively little pain in the posterior (both the figurative and the actual kind). My overall pace was under 13 minutes per mile, which in my mind is more like running than it is like walking. Oh, who cares! Well, I seem to--insert smiley face here if you're the whimsical type.


At more or less the beginning of my run (sounds better than "at a point not quite to the middle but not in the first mile, either"), I went onto the grounds at the VA Center. It was still quite dark, but I easily found a small rehabilitative exercise center in an open courtyard, which I'd remembered coming upon a few years ago during one of my LA runs. Yesterday in the dark, it felt inhabited by wounded soldiers, inhabited in a positive way because they were working out, sweating and healing from the ravages of whatever war brought them to this place.



Then at the end (not more or less the end, but, indeed, a quarter mile from my finish point), I jogged by the gumdrop trees. Lovely!  


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