This went better than I thought it would

After my less-than-stellar performance yesterday, I decided that I was going to go a little easier today to give my legs a rest and let them get used to running again after having taken that week-and-a-half off. I also decided (at Matt's suggestion) to try running a little bit later in the day than I usually do (particularly since it was a lot hotter today than it usually is out here by the coast - most of the time, we get these nice ocean breezes that keep everything pretty cool). I started out pretty slowly (say 7:00 or 7:30 pace - I haven't really been tracking my pace that carefully, since I've mostly been running by feel) because after my run yesterday, I was expecting a lot of bitching and moaning from my legs. And for the first few miles or so, that's what they were doing. Around 2 miles into my run, I ended up stopping at a gas station and just stretching out for around 5 minutes or so to work out some cramps in my quads and calves.

And then a funny thing happened. I'm not sure if if was because the sun was starting to set and the temperature was cooling down to more reasonable levels, or if I just started to find my rhythm, but after having taken that stretching break by the gas station, suddenly the running just seemed much easier. After I started moving again, it just seemed really effortless, and my mile times probably dropped down into the 6:30 or 6:15 range without my really having to think about it. As I got to the final turn in my run, where I would normally turn onto the road that would take me back to my house, I figured that since I was feeling pretty good today, it would probably make sense for me to run a bit farther than I had originally planned, and try to capitalize on the fact that the miles were flowing pretty easily today. I have an old high school friend that I hadn't seen for almost a year that lived in the general area, and I decided that I could add on some more mileage by running by her house and stopping in to say hello. So I turned the corner, heading in the direction of her house, and as I entered her neighborhood...

...I realized, once my keen powers of navigation kicked in, that I had no idea how to get back to her house. Fortunately, I had some extra mileage to cover, and I figured that I could just integrate "exploring" this area into my workout. I decided that the best way to do this would be to pick random streets and run down them until I either saw something that looked familiar or until I had run far enough that I was convinced that I was leaving her neighborhood.

In the course of doing this, I happened to run into one of my old high school teachers who lived in that neighborhood, but who didn't recognize me because I have much more hair now than I did back then. She also gave me kind of a weird look (probably because I was wandering through a residential area at nightfall, looking around for this girl's house, which she might have construed as looking for potentially unwary victims for... whatever it is that sketchy-looking people do with their victims). I suppose I should be thankful she didn't call the cops on me, or loose her dog on me, or something...

Anyway, about two miles later, I eventually found my friend's house (turns out that all I had to do was take the second right on the first street that I had turned onto, and then run about half a block). Unfortunately, she hadn't yet returned to California from Yale yet, so I wasn't actually able to see her. Oh well; at least it made for a good workout (and I made a special mental note to remember the way their next time :-). I might get a chance to visit her when I'm on the east coast later this summer -- my sister's going to Tufts next year, and I'm thinking about taking a train down to Yale to visit a couple of old high school friends that I haven't seen in about three years now.

In other news, I got a preliminary draft of a camera ego-motion algorithm working today for use with a 3D LADAR unit as part of a SLAM algorithm that I'm working on for my senior thesis. W00t!

Miles: 7

Total miles for the week (2 days): 14