dodging cars and having fun with it

I ran 18 miles this morning and I didn’t die. In fact, it was kind of fun.

Mentally, I have to break it up into pieces. I ran 5 miles with my running friend Suzanne and then ran 9 miles with the TNT team. Then I finished with four miles.

The sucky part was I had to run to one spot 3 times (and back) and I passed a dead cat six times. Seven of my miles were on a different loop, so that was good. But poor cat.

I ran my 18 miles in 3 hours, 8 minutes. Slow, yes, but not nearly as slow as I’ve been in the past. I’m improving and that’s exciting. (That averages to 10:44 minute miles.)

Oh and most of my running was done while dodging cars as Asheville has not perfected it’s bike lane system. I almost got hit by an 18-wheeler at one point. That was kind of scary. Other times, I dodged regular cars and a few rednecks in trucks who thought it would be funny to rev the engines right next to me. I almost took out the front end of a Mercedes too – but he would have deserved it. Jerk had a red light and I was in a crosswalk area.

Five weeks from today is my third full marathon. Freaking cool!

In other news, we’ve changed the cat’s name. She’s now Chloe. The husband likes to call her Chloe Checkers Biden (and insert our last name here). Kind of funny. The cat totally has identity issues. She’s also a very smelly cat (cue Phoebe’s “Smelly Cat” song from Friends) and I figured out why today. She keeps eating the dog food. Dog food + Chloe cat = very foul smell. I removed the dog food bowl from her reach.