RUN: 6 miles @??:??, Minish's<-->Rollins, Winter Park, FL

This afternoon, I went back to my friend's house to feed Mushu, only to find that he was a very bad dog. I'll spare you the details, but it made me question my desire to sleep over on the couch that night.

I cleaned up the living room area but while doing so, was growing more frustrated, wishing more and more that the dog was crate trained or had been kept confined to the kitchen.

I didn't like the energy that was filling my body, and I knew that I had to get that energy out. I had to go for a run.

It's been a couple days since my last run, and the marathon's next Sunday. It was cold outside and not too sunny, so it was good weather, but I needed to travel/find a new venue/get away, so I headed north and called my friend Minish on a remote chance that he was available and wanted to run.

He was and he did.

Minish was on his way back from work (Disney), and we ended up arriving at his place at the same time. He changed clothes and then we were off.

I asked him for 6 miles, and so he took me on a route that went out to Rollins College and looped back. It was pretty much all sidewalk, but the new scenery distracted my legs to a point so that they didn't pick up any "bad habits".

The first was tempting, with the smells from the bajillion restaurants on Mills. Then I especially enjoyed our long run up Park Avenue, when a nice-looking valet outside Luma commented on the fact that we were wearing shorts and then called us "crazy bastards".

It was a full run, and we picked up the pace midway through, running the back 3.1 miles in 22:29. We then went back to his place, which felt like a furnace at 71 degrees (granted this is after having run for 45 minutes in sub-44 degree weather), and took the obligatory post-run pictures.

We talked about the Ikea and about next weekend's races then said our good-byes/until-next-times, then I was off.

Still sweaty, I stopped by the tea house to tell Pom good bye and "see you Saturday" before heading back to Melbourne, which I was glad to have done because I just needed the time to myself tonight, and because I have business and non-business to attend to here tomorrow.

It was really nice of Minish to run with me on an incredibly last minute whim-of-a-call. The course was good, the weather was nice, and the pace was quite challenging. Tomorrow I'm running 3 (easy please) with Dave and Robin in PB, then run/walk-ing 10 in Orl with Billy on Saturday morning... it's my last push to train before the marathon.

And now it's feeling like vacation.