My Virtual 5 km Race and Picking Berries

Last night I was looking on the web for a virtual 5km race that I could take part in today, but couldn't find anything specific. I ended on on the Spark People site and signed up to do my own virtual 5km race during this calendar week.

So, today after The Captain left to do work more on his boat varnishing project, I checked my route on classic map my run.. then laced up my Sauconys and off I went.

The route I chose is a 5.0 km route around this hilly neighborhood, that I have run a few times in the past, so just to change things up a bit, I decided to do it in reverse.  That left me a short steep hill at the end, but I thought that would be better than having that steep decline at the start.

I started out pretty speedy for me, I thought, and was enjoying the lovely morning and thinking about my Chi Running technique... checking my stride or my arms or my feet every few minutes.  It felt very odd running my route in the wrong direction.

I seem to have developed the bad habit of licking my bottom lip when I run.  I am a mouth breather and so run with my mouth open, the biggest smile you can imagine across my face... but that does stretch my bottom lip a bit and I guess it must get dry.  I have caught myself licking it occasionally and it is quite annoying to me.

The last 1 km of this route is a not-so-gentle uphill ... note to self... get out the Chi Running book and see if Danny Dreyer has anything to say about running uphill!  I would normally just shorten my stride and sorta run on the balls of my feet up this hill, so I did that, and went for broke!

Then I hit the short and steep little dirt trail that allows me to cut through a greenbelt area and get to the end of my route.  Whew!

All done and it was 36.5 minutes.  Not a PR but not a bad time at all for me in this hilly area and what I was really the most pleased about, is that I did it with no walk break at all.

W3 R36.5 W3
stretch 5 minutes

When I got back to the house, I enjoyed a glass of chocolate milk, and then a banana, while I stretched and cooled down.  Sara is right, chocolate milk is a great after a run.  Normally I would make a smoothie so this was just a smoothie with the banana on the side!

After I bathed and changed my clothes, The Captain arrived back from his work on the boat.  We had lunch and while we were eating, I spotted this brown bunny outside in the yard.  I took this pic through the window so I didn't scare him off....

And then after lunch we went for a walk to pick some blackberries.

The berry patch we chose today is about a 20-minute walk from the house and along a path we biked on Saturday.  Everyone is raving about the abundance of the berries this year... I guess there has to be some benefit from that wet Spring we had here.

It didn't take long to fill up both our 1-pint containers.  Why is it that the biggest berries grow just out of reach?

Do you pick berries?

How do you like to eat them?
Sometimes right off the vine is the best!