I recently spent five days in Charlotte for a public transportation conference (American Public Transportation Association Annual Meeting). These conferences are generally detrimental to diets and workout routines because there are innumerable receptions, dinners, and lunches - all of which are free and include all the booze you can consume. I'd like to note now that I didn't partake in a single sip of an alcoholic beverage, although my coworkers drinked their weight in alcohol during the week. Free food is undoubtedly my kryptonite. I was really determined to make this trip an exception. I planned on sticking to my running schedule and getting plenty of sleep.
I was scheduled to run 4 miles on Saturday, the day I flew in, but I decided to watch Texas get thumped by Zero U instead. Not a great start. I was scheduled to run my longest run to date on Sunday morning - 11 miles. The first problem was that I never got around to figuring out an 11 mile route on Google Earth. With no way of knowing how far I was running, I decided to just run for two hours. I had run 10 miles in 1:45 so I figured that two hours would get me close to 11 miles. The second problem I faced was the best way to stay hydrated. I decided to run by CVS and pick up a bottle of Gatorade during my run. Carrying a heavy bottle of Gatorade while running really sucked, but it did keep me from passing out.
I ran counter-clockwise around downtown about 4 times. I'm not used to running in a large city, so it took some getting used to. The intersections were pretty annoying and really slowed me down. There were some pretty substantial hills on the north side of town. My routes at home are nowhere near as hilly - so that was a good challenge.
I ran three easy miles on Monday to get the soreness out and another four miles on Tuesday. Charlotte was a good city for running, but there wasn't much else to do. I spent most of my free time checking out the transit system. After all, I was there to learn about transit.
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