For various reasons, I decided to go on a long run today. I've been pretty good about running regularly lately, but my normal route was getting boring and I wanted to see if I could push myself. I plotted out an 8 mile run that would take me to some areas of Bloomington I hadn't seen before, and that wouldn't tempt me to cut my route short—a temptation that almost certainly would have been irresistible. (My previous longest run in the past several months was only about 4 1/2 miles, and my longest ever was around seven.)

Well, unfortunately, I took a wrong turn at about the midpoint of the route. Figuring this out was a little demoralizing, and between that and some particularly brutal hills that decided to intervene around the same time, I realized I had to opt for some walking. I found my way back to my route with the help of a kind high school student, and managed to make it home with only a little bit more walking (again, only on uphill sections).

Imagine my surprise when I plotted out the amended route and found that it was over 10 miles—and that even assuming that I walked more than a mile, I almost certainly ran about 9 miles!

October is here! Sara and I celebrated with some pumpkins, and our friends Kyle and Wan:



Don't worry, only one of the creatures in the photo was a model for a pumpkin design...