9 miles

New work route: nottingham, beauregard, w. braddock, crest-summit-monticello, russell, cedar, king, janney's lane, seminary for 9.36 miles, 1:37:12/138, 10:24 min/mi

I thought it was quite hilly but maybe I'm a wimp. It was also very warm and humid this morning for December 1st. 62 degrees and 61 dew point (97% humidity). Plus I was navigating a lot on the new route. Enough excuses for 10:24 min/mi? Oh, yeah. One more excuse. I had a fever of 101.1 last night.

The real point of this exercise was to test out the idea of driving to work (with no traffic) and running there. This doesn't save as much time as running in (driving still takes some time) but the logistics are easier. I'll need some more time to stretch my runs. So how it go?

1. 5:13am - alarm goes off. brush teeth and shave and get in the car
2. 5:36am - pulling away from the house. Not sure how step 1 took 33 minutes. Either time moves faster this early in the morning or I move slower.
3. ~6am - park at work
4. 6:06am - hit the start button on my watch and start running
5. ~7:45am - click the watch off, take a shower, drop my bag in the car (so I don't forget to take it home), buy a muffin, and head upstairs
6. 8:24am - walk in the door of my office. Not sure how the last step took so long, but I chatted with someone in the locker room.
   

I was disappointed that I only had 6 minutes to spare, since I was hoping to have extra time that I could use to run longer (when I stretch a couple of weekday runs) or sleep later. I did manage to get in 12 minutes more of running and in my office at least 6 minutes earlier. There's considerable room to improve here (like bringing in some Clif bars and avoid the muffin stop), but I'm not sure I could get to 12 miles without getting up even earlier.

Bottom line is that this doesn't save me a huge amount of time. It took me 25 minutes door-to-door and it generally takes 40-45 with traffic. Occasionally it will take an hour but that's relatively rare. Plus there is the hassle of packing a bag, which I don't think I want to do every night. I could just go to sleep and get up earlier with that time. The route isn't all that great either (I had to run on concrete sidewalks almost the whole time).

wc7-3