In awe

Day 111

I woke up early and got to church for the morning Easter worship. We were told to come early, lest there won’t be parking spots available at the layer service. Normally, I attended the night worship, but today there was neither Sunday School (they called it Adult Bible Fellowship) nor night worship. I didn’t get to see my friend. Sunday is the day I get to see my best friend.

I couldn’t really focus on the sermon. It wasn’t a hard one, just a three point sermon. One thing I was struck with was Christian can’t stop talking about Jesus because of his resurrection.

Similarly, I can relate to that because I can’t talk about running and I think running is the best and greatest and everyone should join me! I talked much about running than anything else. When I wake up, I run. While during the day, I day dream of running. And when I go to bed, I still think of running. I am compel to spread the gospel of running.

With plenty time left in the day, I went for a run, unlike other Sundays since I didn’t get to see my friend, there was no eating lunch together like we usually do. Our family doesn’t do Easter Brunch either. Worship was over by 9. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and my stomach was rattling. Across from the church was a McDonalds and so I went there and had an egg muffin. They substituted the sausage with bacons. I don’t like bacons. O well. I don’t waste food.

I already planned to do a long run. So the food helped. Nearby the church was a paved trail (4-mile run and the W O & D) and I have been running there almost every Sunday for the past month. I attempted my longest run there yet what is called the Arlington loop. Basically run to DC and back in a big loop. The whole loop is around 18 miles (I think, it felt less).

It was my first time attempting the loop on foot. I biked it last week. The day was nice 18-22C. I got to the trail I think before 10AM. Pretty much I was the first car there. There were occasionally other people passing by.

I wasn’t particularly tired, having done a 12 mile run a day before. I had plenty of rest. I eased into a gentle run. It was a long run by definition. Not long after, I think at about mile 2, I was joined by a DC club runner, he was doing a little faster than I was doing around 9:30-9:45 min/mile. I followed him for the bulk of the way. It was good to have a pacer! I complained to him that he ran a bit too fast for me. I lost him near DC.

I continued on and stopped for lunch in Crystal City, the store I wanted to at was closed, so I had pizzas and a lot of sodas. Afterward, I could hardly move and walked couple miles along the airport and I ran the remained few miles back to my car on the Four Mile Run trail.

I didn’t timed it. I ran at least 14 miles. I know last time I biked, we had about 20 miles though we did not do the full loop that time, we biked halfway and turned around. I don’t think though the whole loop is twenty miles. At most it was 18.

Once I got back to the car, I brought out my bike and biked the whole loop again. It was a fun ride and I finished it at much faster time. I wanted to bike around twice but changed my mind.

After the biking, I started to feel a bit tired. I skipped the swim portion. I was going to hit the pool for some water exercises. The next day though waking up was a bit difficult. All my muscles and bones were tight. I blamed myself of not stretching after the run. Monday is my rest day, so no running.