I need a GPS, please.

First off, a few pics to illustrate life of late.  My running scheduled has been derailed by a few things.  One, Halloween.  I LOVE Halloween, folks.  It's a holiday without pretenses.  I don't have to make sure my kids get the "real reason" for the celebration. It's all about candy and fun.  I don't care if you dress like a slut on Halloween, it just gives Hubs and I something to laugh at.

My favorite costume of 2011 is sweet Alice in Wonderland.  We have worked our way through every Alice in Wonderland book that has ever been published, including the real one by Lewis Carroll.  That man was certainly tripping on something, there were some weird characters that I don't blame Disney for overlooking.  Thankfully, my imaginative little eccentric didn't seem to notice.

The three black ninjas.  Aren't they a hoot?  Mine is the shortest little ninja.  Trick or Treating was so much fun this year with school friends.  These two boys from Jackson's class also each have a little sister around Macy's age, so the group had crazy fun running door to door.  As far as I know, the three boys didn't know what the others were going to be until the week of Halloween.  I guess ninjas are just in.

And lastly, this chunky little monkey.  She was originally going to be a duck, her favorite animal, but the Alice in Wonderland costume took up my sewing time.  Then I got the bright idea to crochet a Cheshire Cat costume to match Alice.  I got through the body and wasn't really loving it, so I dug out the old standby.  The sock monkey has survived three little toddlers over the course of five years, I think I got some good out of it.  It really wouldn't be Halloween if SOMEONE wasn't a sock monkey, right? 

So Halloween preparations took up about half of my normal running time, and then something I've nicknamed "The Devil" took up the other half.  Pinterest.  If you haven't found it yet, stay far far away.  It's a time sucker like that of a million Facebooks.  Now that I've warned you, here is why I love it.

My Pinterest pages are made up of  a few different things.

Hippos:

God bless them, if I could have a hippo pet, I would.

Hedgehogs:

I will have a hedgehog pet one of these days.  Mark my words.

Recipes, and crafts, most of them so far fairly successful; and lastly, awesome funny stuff:

I feel you Debra.

You just laughed, didn't you?

So with all this time wasting, I skipped my long runs for a week and a half.  Not running really affected my mood, which I will delve into some other time.  Since the half marathon is in just over two weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to make up for lost time and run REALLY long yesterday. 

A long run is not a big deal to me.  Physically I felt fine, but mentally...I had some issues.  First off, I decided to try a new route.  Bad idea.  I am completely directionally challenged.  I do not know which way my house faces, I do not know which way I am facing at any given time, and I am not good at just "finding my way" somewhere.  Also, I have a very bad obsession with needing to know EXACTLY how far I have run.  If I'm going to wear myself out, I need to know that I went as far as I intended. 

So, to start out, my trainer husband and I worked up a plan for my run.  I wanted to go 12 miles.  So we figured four to the new trail, four on the trail, and four home.  The four to and back were no biggies.  I knew the route well and there was only one turn.  It was on the trail where it all went wrong.

First off, Hubs told me to run to where the trail passes under "College" street (a major street in our city) and then turn around.  Sounds simple, right? Well, after I had started, I realized I didn't know which way College was from the trailhead.  Hmmm.  It took me another mile to figure out that I didn't really need to go anywhere specific, I could just run until I hit a two mile marker and then turn around.  Problem solved, right? 

So I got to the trailhead, and God bless them, there was a map!  This was going to be great.  I may not be good at directions, but I am a hell of a map reader.  Hmm, funny thing, the map was not oriented to the trail...So at the star that said "you are here," the trail went north and south, but the trail that I was looking at in front of me went right and left.  See how I was confused?  Hell if I knew which way was north.  So I shrugged my shoulders and took the path to the right.  I still only needed to go two miles, turn around, and then head home.  How could this go wrong?

So I ran about half a mile (Still had mile markers at this point.  This is important.) and saw a cute little bridge that angled into the woods and had a "zero" mile marker for a different trail.  Awesome!  I'll just follow this trail a couple miles into the woods, and then turn around, and I'm done.  La la la, life is good, wait, a fork in the road?  Hmm, this shouldn't be a big deal, I'll just take the path on the...left!  So I'm running up a freaking mountain, looking frantically for a mile marker so I could turn around and run downhill.  And I'm looking, and looking, and then about 15 minutes later, I see a sign.  I get closer and it says "Thank you for using our trails, love, Olathe Parks and Rec."  Uh, what?  This trail is done?

No problem, I'll turn around and take the other path.  If I ran an extra mile or whatever, all the more better for me.  I still needed to run a measured distance so I knew with certainty that I ran 12 miles.  So I took the path on the right, took a cleansing breath, and waited for my mile markers to start showing up.  And waited.  And waited.  And came to the end of the trail, again.  Now I was pissed.  I was pissed at Olathe Parks and Rec for posting a "zero" mile marker, and then forgetting the rest of the posts.  I was pissed at Patrick for thinking that sending me on a new trail was a good idea.  And I was pissed because in the back of my mind I was thinking that maybe I didn't even run a mile into the woods and that was why there was no mile markers!

I started my run back home, physically a little tired, but mentally spent.  I cannot deal with that much thinking when my body is working so hard.  So I spent an hour on MapMyRun this morning and figured out that I did make it to JUST 12 miles.  I kind of wish I ran like 15 or something, to make myself feel better, but at least I ran as much as I intended to. 

And the moral of this story is, I need a Garmin GPS.