Of Wildflowers and Roadkill-- Spring Running Photo Journal

WARNING: Below are lovely pictures of spring wildflowers. There are ALSO two pictures of semi graphic roadkill. After all, it would not be accurate documentation if I did not include them. In one instance, it's the partially decayed head and upper body of a wild hog. In the second it's my bloody scraped knees after I took a spill on the pavement. I have kept the wild hog picture as a link only, but the bloody knee is visible. If that bothers you, scroll past it quickly. It's the last picture in the post.

So, today, my workout looked like this:



Point one: It's short.

Point two: It ended abruptly.

I'll admit, it was my own fault. Saturday I had an awesome 5 mile run and then spent three hours cutting my grass with a pushmower (which, by the way, I'm totally counting as cross training). Now, around here, a lot of us don't have actual lawns, just patches of wild vegetation we keep trimmed back to a respectable height. I was feeling more than a little guilty at mowing down all the lovely allium and Indian Paintbrush, but it had to be done. As much as I love the wildflowers, I'm averse to snakes and things that like to crawl amongst the wildflowers. Luckily, I noticed on my run this Sunday that a lot of my neighbors have acres of land that they let bloom, and it's really starting to be gorgeous.

So, today, I vowed to take along my clunky camera, knowing full well it would screw with my planned workout (three green yellow intervals between two blue runs). I've been saying for weeks that I need to take pictures of the things I see while running (because who isn't amused to find used condoms in the middle of the road, ya know?) and today just seemed like a beautiful day. Plus, I had a feeling some people didn't believe me about the wild hog carcass I'd been skirting for the last week. For today, then, I decided to be runner/photojournalist. I should've known better than to attempt multi-tasking. I am, after all, a natural blonde.

It all started pretty well. I encountered most of the flower patches while I was running in my blue zone. I didn't feel guilty about pausing my workout to snap off a few pics.



















By the time I encountered the wild hog carcass, I was supposed to be running in the green zone, so I just snapped off two quick shots, and moved out.

The wild hog carcass that has been moving back and forth across this road for the last week.

At this point, I have to say, I'm a little peeved with my miCoach, because for the whole next section of the run, it was reporting paces of 8-9 minutes in the yellow and no more than 10:30 in the green, but the uploaded data shows almost nothing sub-9:00. This is a glitch I've encountered before with the miCoach, but I guess it's the heart rate that matters... as long as you're not running a race.

Anyway, I finished up my second yellow interval, and I was feeling pretty crappy, to be honest. Not to mention, I missed some really nice pics of crape myrtle trees in full bloom because I didn't want to mess up my workout. I guess it was inevitable that, as I was plodding along, trying to get my heart rate to come back down, I tripped on some road patch going down a hill, and fell... Of course, there were witnesses. The truck that was approaching me slowed to a stop, but when I got right back up and waved, he kept going. I don't know what I'd have done if he'd actually offered to help me out. Probably sprinted into the woods and died of embarrassment. Ugh.

Needless to say, I stopped my workout there. I still had more than a mile to go before I was home. I thought I'd be limping the whole way. But I dusted myself off, decided my camera seemed to still be working, except maybe the flash, which I hated anyway, and decided to make the most of the long, slow, walk home by squeezing off a few more pics.

This is one of my favorite stretches of road.












Turned out, after about half a mile of walking, it seemed like all the damage was pretty much superficial, and I felt up to running again, so I did another mile at about 12:00min/mile, just a twinge in my left ankle. As soon as I got home, I took this picture of the damage to my knee.






All in all, not a terrible run. I didn't die, of embarrassment or otherwise, and I don't think I did any permanent damage that will interfere with my upcoming race or training. The workout I had plan is pretty much a total loss, but I still covered the distance, and that's what counts. Tomorrow as a planned off day, anyway, so here's to hoping I don't stiffen up too much, or I might have to go work out the kinks.

I guess the moral of the story is, sometimes you run around roadkill, and sometimes you are the roadkill, but the road's still a pretty awesome place.

Until the next bend in the road, watch out for giant plot holes... and roadkill.

Tracy