Sauc 5 - Aborted 4 5K - Damn, it felt like a beautiful morning to run, so without a real plan I decided I'd hit 4 miles. Without much thought, I found myself a mile and a half in at 8:45 pace. OOPS. The crash was inevitable. Right around the 2-mile turnaround it felt like the heat had gone up 20 degrees. At 2.5 miles, my legs tightend up and my pace was down to 10:00 or so. At 3 miles I was counting down to an even 5K and I pulled the plug. Damn.

Still better than 29:05 on the couch, right?

Just under a mile in, I saw a somewhat overweight family out for a walk/run attempt. It really looked like it might have been their first time out. I though of my failed attempts to get into running in the past - setting out with new shoes, grand goals of running ALL THE WAY AROUND THE BLOCK, and NO FREAKING CLUE what I was doing. I watched them run about 50 yards, and then Dad pulled them back to a walk. As I passed them I wanted to impart some kind of encouragement - some advice of not trying to go too fast or far too soon - to tell them to look up Couch to 5K online. Or DailyMile. Instead, as I passed, the dad said, "See, HE'S still running! That's what we've got to do." My only dumb-ass response was a thumbs up and, "The trick is to just run faster than the mosquitos." What I SHOULD have done was walked with them and chatted for a bit. It may or may not have helped/encouraged them a little, but it REALLY would have kept me from crashing and burning. Dummy.