Week 35 (August 22 – August 28) – MJ’s Running in 2021

I ran more than 10 miles last week, let’s see how many I can get this week.

Day 238 – 08/26/2021 – 5 miles
Welcome to the first run of the week.

For the last couple weeks, I have started running around my old route, which spans from the Northville township to the city of Novi. When I was running the same route last winter, in the cold weather and snow scattered all across the roads and sidewalks, I used to find it really peaceful and enjoyable to run on this route; But, the warm (or should I say, hot) Michigan weather is making it difficult for me to run on this same route.
In spite of this, I try to get in as many miles as I can every time I run here and I must say, I look forward to the different traffic lights and walk signals, which give me some rest and enough time to catch my breath.

I completed 5 miles of running today, just a couple minutes before the 1 hour mark, which is a good time for me.

Day 239 – 08/27/2021 – 5.3 miles
Welcome to the second run of the week.

This run was quite unusual. When I started the run, I thought I was going to run my usual route around Northville-Novi area. But, the traffic lights at Haggerty stared at me, I thought, it would be cool to run around the shopping district of city of Northville and Livonia. Instead of taking a usual left on Haggerty, I took a right and that’s where I started this awesome and adventurous run.
First, I passed a gas station, followed by Meijer supercenter, then a Chick-fil-A, Starbucks, Kohl’s, Target, Costco, Home Depot, AMC, countless restaurants, other stores and residential complexes. I mean, it was so much fun to run around all these cool stores and so many people staring at a guy running through the busy streets in the broad daylight, but I could care less.
The run ended when I entered my community through the other entrance on seven mile road. I must say it was fun to run like this and this run was definitely faster than my last run, so it turned out to be a good decision.

I completed 5.3 miles of running in exactly 1 hour.

Day 240 – 08/28/2021 – 7 miles
Welcome to the third and last run of the week.

I must tell you that I was in no mood to run today. When I woke up this morning, I knew I felt a little tired, my back was a little stiff and my toes were telling me not to go out for a run and just sleep it off. But, my Instagram was telling me a different story.

So, today was a very important day for my favorite Ultra-Marathon Runner, Courtney. When I opened my Instagram in the morning, I saw that she was competing in the UMTB, which (IMO) is the pinnacle of the Ultra Marathon running. I knew that she had won it the first time she ran and this was the second time she was running. I was very sure about how easily she will be able to finish this race, but little did I know what she had in store.

Anyway, that news was enough for me to force myself out of the bed, stare at my socks for a good 10 minutes, then putting them on and then my shoes and with heavy steps, start my run. I must tell you, I didn’t care how much time I would take, I just told myself to finish this 5-mile loop and don’t do it for yourself, do it for Courtney.

I was so pumped up and wasn’t tired because of the slow pace that I could finish 7 miles of running. I felt so proud of myself and this would definitely go down one of the most memorable runs for me. When I got back and checked the status of UMTB, I was relieved to find that Courtney was still leading the Women’s race and was in the Top 10 runners overall. She would go on to win the Women’s UMTB and finish 7th overall, becoming the top performer from the USA. I felt so happy for her, motivating myself to run more.

Anyway, I finished this 7 miles run in 1 hour 45 minutes, one of my slowest, but certainly a memorable run.

Before you go, please check out the week number 35 highlights. I finished 17.3 miles this week, bringing the distance covered in 2021 to 530.3 miles.

See you next week!

Published by milindjagre

Please reach out to me at milindjagre@gmail.com for further information.

One thought on “Week 35 (August 22 – August 28) – MJ’s Running in 2021

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