I (Heart) Running Again

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Former running blogger Dennis, who runs with the Greater Boston Track Club, e-mailed to let me know he was coming to town this weekend and wondered if I wanted to run with him one morning. So he and I joined my track club’s Saturday morning half marathon group for a run that starts and ends on Harbor Island.

Dennis ran with the faster crowd, while I hung on to run with Amy, a member of the masters women team that I used to meet for afternoon lake runs a couple of years ago. We ended up taking a route along Shelter Island, an aquatic hamlet that’s best known among locals as home to Humphrey’s by the Bay concerts. Amy raved about a 5k that finishes here with a champagne brunch, so I think that’ll be the next race on my schedule.

I ended up running 7 miles, maybe a little more – my watch battery died enroute – that morning, grateful the fog stuck around to help hide the humidity. We ended with crunches and planks and now I know for sure I need to ramp up the core strengthening. My back was killing me midway through the second set.

Soon as I dropped off Dennis at his downtown hotel and arrived home, I quickly showered and headed to a watch maker to have the batteries in both my stopwatch and heart rate monitor replaced. I haven't worn the HR monitor for at least a half year now. If you own a Polar heart rate monitor system, you don’t need to go to a Polar Service Center to have the battery replaced, as the manual indicates. Any watch/jewelry repair shop can do it – and probably for less money. I had to update saved basic settings, including my weight last recorded during the original purchase. It was 10 pounds less than I weigh now. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to reset that section.

[Excuse my expression in the above photo of me and Dennis. The camera battery also was dying that morning and poor Mike was having trouble getting the picture. It finally took just as I was convinced it never would.]

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