Running Samaritan

I guess my ladder workout yesterday took more out of me than I originally thought. I got a decent amount of sleep (6.5 hours), but should of just stayed in bed when the alarm went off at 5:15am. I also won't complain anymore about my lack of sleep after seeing Leah's crazy schedule as she works towards a PhD in physics and trains for the Chicago Marathon :-)

This morning's run felt like I was just going through the motions. It was totally blah and I struggled to stay motivated. Plus, I was tired to boot. This would have been the perfect day to use a heart rate monitor, if I had one, to gauge if I was running my recovery day too hard. Oh well, at least it's 9.1 miles in the bank.

The run did remind me of a funny thing that happened to me last week when I was running the same route. I was about 2.5 miles into the run last week when I noticed a wallet lying in the middle of the road. I scooped it up and continued on my way. It was a large, heavy woman's wallet that was stuffed with credit cards, receipts, and I believe lots of cash.

Do you know what my first thought was when I started running with the wallet? Not who lost it or what an incovenience it was or even how much money was in it, but "do I really have to carry this brick with me for the next 6+ miles?"

And that made me stop and open it up to check who the owner was. I felt like I was invading the person's privacy, but it opened right up to her driver's license. I checked the address and then quickly closed it.

The street name was unfamiliar to me, but at least it was in my town. I went off my planned route and turned at the next street corner. I decided I would only run up to the next block, and if it wasn't the right street I would turn back, swing by my house to drop off the wallet and then continue my run. Plus, since I was wearing my Garmin Forerunner 205, I didn't have to worry about not knowing how much extra distance I was running. As luck would have it, the next street was where the wallet's owner lived. I found the right house and then rang the bell.

Now you have to imagine the following scene . You're a teenage girl woken up at 6:15 am by some skinny, sweaty 41 year-old guy with shaggy hair standing at your front door in only a short-sleeved shirt, shorts, black socks, running shoes and black gloves. Sounds pretty creepy.

You should have seen her eyes go wide as she looked out the window at the side of the door. She was still half asleep, because it took me a several times of pointing at the wallet and saying slowly and loudly, "I found a wallet" before the realization sunk in.

In hindsight, it probably wasn't the smartest idea for her to open the door to get the wallet, but at least no harm came of it and her mom(?) got her wallet back. Of course, I might have went to the wrong address because I was half-asleep as well....

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