Yesterday’s storm left the roads quite a mess this morning. There was lots of ice on the road, and the shoulders were barely walkable, much less runnable if I met traffic.

Enough that, I wasn’t even thinking about running from the house this morning and thought running in Waterville would be a better option. Yeah, the roads were that bad. The temps were going up quickly-above freezing, and the sun is out, which means that by this afternoon, Philbrick Road should be nice and clear.

Also, I had to meet up with Ryan G., who had generously offered to meet me at the Sidney exit to give me my Striders buff. Something that was supposed to pick up back in December, but we haven’t been able to catch up with one another.

Once I got going, you could tell where the Town Crew stopped sanding as heavily after the top of Philbrick Hill. From my house to the hill was a mess, and once I started down, the road was mostly clear. If it had been that way in front of the house, I wouldn’t have planned to run in Waterville.

On the way over to meet Ryan, I had to go out around a runner coming up the hill before Annie’s, he was chugging right along, and I could see that the side of the road was a mess. It was good to see someone out running, and then when I parked at the lot by the Sidney exit, another runner went by. So people were still getting out and running in Sidney, even with the roads a bit of a mess. Part of Winter running around here.

It was nice to talk with someone who loves running as much or more than I do. We got caught up on how we are doing, what some of our plans might be, a few stories, and stuff runners talk about. Yeah, it was a touch of normalcy in a crazy, mixed-up time. Although we are over six feet apart and wearing facemasks, so not that normal. heheheehee

I had planned on going up to Waterville to run after meeting with Ryan, but he said the roads were pretty wet up there, and Cool Street had a lot of puddles. Based on what Ryan was saying, I decided to run in Augusta. I was pretty sure that running from Planet Fitness on one of my old courses would be pretty doable. Plus, I wouldn’t have to worry about soaking my feet as much on those courses.

Unfortunately, I ran into a time crunch if I wanted to get back home to eat lunch with TheWife. It is one of those things that I attempt to do most days and something I enjoy.

When I got to Planet Fitness, it brought back many memories, and I sat there for a minute and just enjoyed them. I wondered how Mike was doing, thought about my last run with Jon and the last time I saw Frank along with a few other regulars, yeah the memories of what life used to be like. I like this gym and will go back to it this Fall once the pandemic settles down. I had purposely driven the back-way to Planet Fitness and knew that Leighton Road only had a couple of bad spots.

So I decided to do my old Planet Fitness 5K course and headed out.

It is the first time I have run from Planet Fitness since last March, and it is a pretty flat course compared to the house, so it would be an excellent test of where I am with my fitness.

I didn’t waste a lot of time getting moving and worked on my cadence, and once I got on Leighton avoiding the few bad spots. The one thing about running from Planet Fitness is that the course does go on Outer Civic Center Drive and Leighton Road (two of the busier roads in Augusta). I am not used to running in that much traffic now, and it was a little disconcerting at times with the amount of traffic.

I survived, though.

No, I wasn’t racing, but I ran with a little extra effort, even though I was wearing my Nike Milers. I think this is about as fast as I would want to run in these shoes. They responded nicely and everything, but…it seems like I have to work a little extra to keep them at faster paces. It is not a bad thing, but I need to remember the Milers for me at least like that 9:00 minute pace.

Overall, I was pleased with the run and pacing. All three of the mile splits were within six seconds, while if you look at my Strava pace graph, I was all over the place. As I get into better weather, the pacing will settle down a bit, and now to get out of the funk, I was getting into and start training for something.

Especially since Maine will be opening up vaccinations for my age bracket this week, and while I am not looking to be in the first wave of the 60-70-year-olds, I will be looking to get my shot done sooner than later. It is the start of the road back towards our new normal.

Good run.