Active Living

My Mom is a fan of "incidental exercise" or "active living". Like where you park the car at the back of the parking lot to walk a little bit further, or ride your bike to the shops instead of driving. Small changes.
This morning I had a trail run! I haven't run trails for ages. I went with a couple Galeforce friends - two of us are training for upcoming trail races. Naively, I told the most experienced of the group that I was hoping to run about 12k. He laughed, and said that - since this first run together we were only doing 1 hour - we would be lucky to "run" 6k up the trails! I thought he was exaggerating.
I thought wrong.
It became evident that trails are a lot trickier in reality than they were in my mind. Steep uphills with rocky ground made for slow progress! We wound our way around, stopping for short walking breaks when I was no longer keeping up. The focus was intense. Instead of letting my mind wander, every spot of my attention was focussed on watching where that next step should be all the while keeping half an eye out for tree branches. I didn't get a total distance or complete stats, as I forgot to start my watch at the beginning.

Approximate distance: 6.3km
Approximate elevation gain: 198m
Approximate time: 55min
Average pace: 7.49min/km

Done and done! I was wiped at the end.
And then a friend cancelled plans at the last minute, and I was invited out for a bike ride to the markets. So we got all set up on our bikes...and then a friend's bike wasn't working properly. We had a few choices before us.

a) my other two friends carry on ahead and I chill back at home for a cruisy morning
b) we spend the morning fixing the bike and miss the markets
c) pile into my car and drive out
d) I run beside the bikes

Surprise! Option D). The ultimate active living. I'll just run out to the markets...and hence today I had a second run and it was even Run With Bikes Part II!! Fantastic.

Distance: 7.5km
Time: 51.09 (okay, so I was really tired by this point!)
Average pace: 6.48min/km