A Run After A Run

Friday I returned from a business trip to Iowa.
The trip required that I change planes three times - each way.
Because of delays (broken airplane in Atlanta, thunderstorms near Minneapolis) we missed our connecting flight out of Minneapolis (by about two minutes).
In our (there was two of us) attempt to catch said flight, we RAN through the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport at about 9:15 PM.
I am not sure of the total distance but it could have been as much as a third of a mile.
The trip back was not as exciting.
That was the first run.

Anyway, Saturday, I again wanted to run up Bankhead Parkway.
And again, I added a little more to the course.
I parked a few hundred feet further away from the hill.
Because of the effort expended while working on the trip, I felt tired.
Knowing this, I was prepared for a physical setback in this practice session.

I started out on a flatter section of road near my car, so by the time I got to the steeper part of Bankhead, I was huffing pretty hard.
I did not try to push the effort too hard, I wanted to finish the whole course, speed was not a consideration.

Much to my delight, I was (again) able to run all the way up Bankhead and along Toll Gate to The Hill, where I stopped to walk down and then back up.
I met a man coming up The Hill who was practicing for the race on Monday.

Since he was running the Cotton Row course the normal way, we ran within two hundred feet of each other all the way down Bankhead.
I might have run slower had I been by myself, but part of me wanted to catch him.
I never did catch him, but I never lost sight of him.
Like I said, we stayed within about two hundred feet of each other, most of the time, closer than that, sometimes as little as twenty feet or so.

Because of my effort to match the pace of the man, I ran faster than I normally would have down the big hill.
In addition, I was parked about an eighth of a mile farther down the road than before, so I got a good extra workout.
In spite of the extras on this session, I experienced no joint, muscle, or connective structure problems.
My lungs got a good cleansing, also.
I am looking forward to adding a little more to this course over the coming weeks.