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Does crawling under this fence make my butt look fat?

November 2, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Woke up this morning realizing I hadn't showered after last night's run and decided that rather than taking a shower I should go for run first. Since this is my second-to-last day in DC before returning to Bosnia, I wanted a really good breakfast so I figured I'd run to Bethesda Bagels and pick up a chocolate chip bagel with cream cheese and lox and run back with it in my pocket (wrapped). The first couple blocks feel pretty good, probably because they were downhill but on the whole I felt weary throughout the run. Not sore per se or sleepy or end-of-a-race tired, just worn down. My muscles were asking for a break, just like they do when I've run Ragnar or Reach-the-Beach relays and I'm asking my legs to go back out again after 2 runs in the prior 12 hours (which is more or less what I was demanding of them in this case, though at least I hadn't been getting 2-hours of sleep in a van).

So if I was so tired why did I do it? LEAVES! Sure I could have just run to Bethesda Bagels, and, like in high school days, called my mom to pick me up. But the air was warm and the sky clear and the leaves gorgeous. I turned onto the Chevy Chase Country Club golf course's nature trail, which has been one of my favorite places to run for the past several years. The club is bounded by Connecticut, Bradley Blvd, Wisconsin, and Chevy Chase Village. My plan was to use to the golf course to cut from Conn to Wisc, but I soon discovered that the back entrance onto Wisconsin I used to take when they were doing construction the last couple years was firmly locked and there wasn't enough space to squeeze through between the gates, not was the fence amenable to climbing. I felt somewhat demoralized as I continued around the loop back toward Connecticut, but then I saw my chance and seized it--a narrow gap between the fence and the ground. I got my head and rig cage through just fine, but my butt almost defeated me. After some serious wiggling and squirming, I managed to shimmy through. I popped out right next to that screen on a pole that displays your speed on Bradley. I wandered around the neighborhood between Bradley and East-West for a while catching leaves, the same neighborhood that I'd tried to mentally map without looking at a real map on runs back in high school (see Simonson 2002). Once I cross into Bethesda I caught several more leaves and somehow found myself on the Capital Cresent Trail... okay I found myself there because I really wanted to run it. When I finally got to the bagel store, I got a pizza bagel (lunch) and a chocolate chip bagel with cream cheese and lox (breakfast). I couldn't fit them both in my pocket, so I decided that I could better catch leaves carrying the one the bagels in my stomach rather than in my hand. I'd had enough intensity club training at this point that it wasn't a problem. I managed to catch one more leaf on the way home and even added on a few more blocks in my neighborhood before calling it a day. Or a half day. I still had another run to 3 hours hence with the kiddos.