That's More Than 5K!

After a few years mostly off, for various reasons, I am trying to get a little back into running this year. I'm up to what I considered my "normal" distance, which I measured this morning on my bicycle at 3.41 miles, or, if my conversion is correct, 5.48 km. I am certainly giving more significant figures than is reasonable for the device. Anyway, so what if I run 10-minute miles! To anyone that runs regularly, this will seem real slow. But I suppose this seems like a long way to run to people that don't.

As an incentive and goal, I recently signed up for a 5 km race, which will occur on August 12 at a local park. Since I go more than that distance, I figure that it wouldn't be too tough. Still, I thought it might be wise to go try the course before race day, since I don't normally run on a packed, tiny gravel (what is that called?) surface, and the course is hillier than my neighbourhood. Since the course was available online, I went to the park, found what I thought was the starting line, and gave it a try.

Forty minutes later, I was still running, and I stopped a bit before I reached the "finish". That is the longest duration I've run in a long time! I know I wasn't fast, but surely I had covered 5 km in that time, at least I would think. On the 12th, I will discover which of the following are true:

• I (or the map) messed up with the location of the starting line.
• I am a much slower runner than I would have ever thought.
• My bicycle odometer is really messed up.