A Little Help & Some Music

Yesterday I set off on a six miler around Perkins Pond in New Hampshire; one of my favorite settings for a run.  The route is mostly dirt roads and has huge roller coaster hills so I had to mentally prepare myself ahead of time which basically meant telling myself not to worry about my pace and to simply relax and enjoy the scenery.  I hadn't run this loop since last year, but I figured I would probably remember the turns so I didn't look at a map before I headed out.  Not smart.  I was cruising along taking it in and then all of the sudden I realized I had been going down a lot but had not been coming back up.  I knew the run was hilly so I figured I just hadn't gotten to the final turn yet and kept chugging along.  Again, not smart.   Finally, at about six miles in, I reached an intersection of what looked like a major road and at this point I knew I had done something wrong.  I flagged a woman down, told her I was trying to run around Perkins Pond, and asked her if she could tell me how to get back.  She smiled and said, "I hope you have enough charge in that music thingy because you need to turn around and go straight back up these hills for about two miles and then take a right on North Street."  Awesome.  Then I asked her if there was any other way to do it but she thought and decided that her way was the easiest and quickest, so to speak.  Then she said, "it's not too bad and you look like you can handle it.  You'll be fine."  I thanked her for the vote of confidence and headed back up.  In the end I accidentally ran ten miles. There were more than a few moments when I was so tired I just wanted to stop and sit down.  Truthfully, if it weren't for this woman's words of encouragement I might have asked her to drive me home.  In this case, a little help went a long way both mentally and literally.  That and some good tunes from my "music thingy".

Listen to this:

Sappho - Tribes