9 more miles down

Today was my first day that I ran a path that brought me to hills. I came to the conclusion that hills are a lot harder to run than flat areas. I thought I did pretty well considering it was new to me. The route I ran brought me about a half mile from my house, then, a one mile loop, 8 times. I finished the loop with the half mile trip back to home to complete 9 miles for the trip. The loop I ran had some pretty aggressive hills both up and down. I think it was good practice for me to get and it went well. With the hills I decided to put in planned walks in at the tops of each of the hills. Each walk consisted of only about ten steps for me to get enough water into me, then it was back to running again. It was a good plan.
Last night when I was getting ready to go, I got some spanish tutorials onto the ipod. I was looking forward to getting some new words into my spanish vocabulary. Unfortunately, I spent too much time getting the arm band on over my sweat shirt and not enough time remembering to bring headphones. Yep, I was the dork carrying the ipod around, but not able to use it. I did say "buenos dias" to a few people that I ran by. I figured that was some practical experience with the language. Hopefully next time I will remember the headphones.
I got to flag down a police car as well. As I was running, I came across a manhole that wasn't covered. I was in a groove running and didn't want to stop to figure out if I could lift the cover. I also didn't want to have a "Baby Jessica" incident, so I kept a lookout for someone who would be able to get it covered. I got about three laps in before I saw a police car drive by (two of the roads I was running on were pretty busy so I expected to see one sooner or later). It was a girl cop. I told her where it was and she said she would take care of it. I got to the place where it was about 4 minutes later and saw her driving off. I figured she wasn't able to locate it, but nope, she was able to find it and cover it up in that 4 minutes. Kind of embarrassing, but at least I didn't have to do it.
Overall, it was a good run. I was happy with my progress and thought I could have done a few more miles. I got home feeling good and think I might tweak my running plan to put more miles in in order to get me closer to ready for the marathon. Only 6 weeks left. I am pretty sure I will be ready for it when it comes. Matt, I probably won't need that piggy-back ride.