Slow Time

E. and I ran the usual 6.5 mile Art Museum loop. We literally talked start to finish, first about an 0possum that snuck up on her and that progressed to last night's episode of "House" to evidence based practice and several other topics until the run was finished. While it seemed fast, the watch told a different story, reading 61:01.

That's fine, although I'm starting to think that these "easy" days obviate the need to take "off" days. That sounds like something from "you know you are addicted to running when. . ."

Another reason for the slow time is that when I run by E's house that actually extends the run by about a quarter mile. Due to the geometry of the neighborhood, which I won't go into, I thought that incorporating her house into the route would not change the distance significantly. However, I. has turned me on to Keyhole, some really cool mapping software (this is not a paid endorsement although it might as well be) that is available over the web, that lets you plot running routes and it computes the distances. Plugging the route variations into the map shows a differential of about a quarter mile, which is consistent with the slower times I get when I run with E. However, even after taking into account that this morning's run was a "long" 6.5, it was still slow.

I have spent a few sessions geeking over the Keyhole software, but will probably not buy it for two reasons. First, and to my satisfaction, the distances I estimate for my routes are surprisingly consistent with what Keyhole says, and second, I think that Keyhole tends to underestimate distances because you can only connect points on the map by straight line and a fair amount of my running is done off of traditional roads where you have to somewhat improvise the route on the map. However, the software is way cool and definitely worth checking out for a free trial.