Pay Attention!

141 Days and counting.

Last night was my decoupling run. How this works is you run a loop of X distance twice trying to keep the same pace for each loop and see how much higher your average heart rate is on the second lap in comparison to your first lap. Naturally your second lap should have a higher average heart rate just due to fatigue but the lower the difference between the two is an indication of your overall fitness. The loop course is key. If you do an out and back then you run the risk of having the out leg being more or less hilly than the back leg thus your results are skewed. This is all besides the point as it is not the actual purpose of the workout that I wanted to talk about but the events during the workout.

Since it gets dark at about 5:00 these days and the sun doesn't come up until about 7:00 most of the runs that Kati and I do are in the dark. To make things a little safer as we run the dark trails just south of our house we purchased some ultra light weight head lamps so we can see variations in the sidewalks to avoid tripping as well as become more visible to others on the trails and to cars. Let me first note that I have never had any problems with cars in the past not seeing or yielding to me on a run. That being said let the story begin.

Last night was the first time that I have had a need to wear my headlamp since we just got them last week. This lamp has many different settings and degrees of brightness to choose from. I initially put it on the dimmest setting but switched to the brightest shortly into the run. Less than a mile in I see a car coming out of a side road. At first he slowed down but continued to inch forward into the road and right in front of me. Eventually I had to stop, throw my hands up and give a sturdy "What the hell?". He threw his hands up as well, surprisingly without the Texas Salute, and I went on by no worse for the wear. One accident avoided. On lap 2 at just a little over a mile in I was at a major intersection waiting for my green light. Once I got it I started south across the street and noticed a car coming north wanting to turn into the lane that I was crossing. Apparently he didn't see me either and had to make a wide last minute turn so as to not run me over.

C'mon people, pay attention!

I might have to stop wearing the headlamp because I think that I'm safer without it. It's just like those parents that put their kids in full pads to go place tennis, their kid is the only one that ends up with a broken arm.