adventures in cambridge

My mom has a delicious recipe for chili that she obtained from a friend on the Weight Watchers diet. She was originally told that is was 1 "point" (WW-members understand) for every serving, but as we later found out, it's actually 3 points per serving. To this day, we lovingly refer to the recipe as "1 point/3 point chili."

You'll now understand when I call this my 13-mile/9.6-mile run.

I planned on running in the dark, since there's little choice in the matter when you run after work. I also know myself well enough to realize I am terrible with directions. Consequently, I chose the simplest route I could possibly think of that still took me 13 miles from my house. I would run to Porter Square--a T-stop I've been to so many times, I like to think I could find it with my eyes closed--then run north up Mass Ave for many miles until I hit a road called Pleasant Street. At Pleasant Street, I'd turn around and retrace my steps until I was once again at my front door. Not the most exciting route, but simple enough that even I should be able to follow it.

I also planned to try a packet of "carb gel" (if you've never heard of this, I'll blog about it once I've actually tried it... but it looks disgusting) for the first time. Thirteen miles was about a half marathon, after all--fueling mid-run seemed like a good idea.

Enter complications! My parents always tell me I live a charmed life, and the following example makes it difficult to argue that contention.

Jogging up Somerville Ave to get to Porter Square, a man all of a sudden began jogging next to me, holding out a small black cube for me to take. I looked confusedly at him for a brief second--until I realized it was my cell phone! It had fallen out of my pocket, and he had run to catch up with me and return it. I answered with a little-too-loud, "THANK YOU!"--partly due to my earbuds, mostly due to much-deserved gratitude. Wherever you are, Nice Man, I owe you one.

Along with my cell phone dropped the carb gel to the ground--who knows what happened to that. Although those little packets are relatively expensive, I can't say I was too sorry to have lost it. =)

I arrived to Porter without further complications, and I started down Mass Ave. Unfortunately, while plotting out my route, it never actually dawned on me that Mass Ave runs both north and south through Porter Square. Mostly thinking about how wonderful it was to have my cell phone (now gripped firmly in my right hand), I started running south with no awareness of my mistake.

In addition, at some point fairly early in my trip (the wrong way) down Mass Ave, I followed a sidewalk curve instead of crossing the street as I was apparently supposed to, and I ended up on Cambridge St. This mistake I suspected, at least--and the street signs parallel to my path confirmed my suspicions when I finally made out a few of them several blocks later.

I went with it--Cambridge St seemed as good a street as any to follow in a straight path. I passed by some college buildings (there are a million of those around here, so I didn't think much of it) and continued until I hit the Lechmere T-stop. The intersection just past Lechmere looked like one I could easily get lost on if I continued forward and then later tried to make my way back across it again, so I decided it was as good of time as any to turn around.

On my way back, I passed the same college and realized--for the first day in my life--I was on the Harvard campus! It's nerdy, but that was ridiculously exciting for me, and I kicked myself that I hadn't realized what college (on Cambridge Street--duh!) I had run past before. Still, it was a very exciting moment for me--and whatever building I ran directly by that looked like a church with its gorgeous stained glass windows was really quite breathtaking. Harvard!!

I made my way back to Mass Ave and back to Porter without difficulty. I planned to run from Porter Square to Mossland--a ridiculously simple path I had taken countless times to get home from work at my first apartment here. Blame it on trying to navigate in the dark--or more accurately, blame it on trying to navigate in the dark when you're already pretty exhausted from running for a while--but I missed the turn.

I'm happy to report that my mistake was mostly just amusing at that point. Based on the amount of time I'd been running, I knew I needed to add some extra mileage to my impromptu route anyway if I was going to get anywhere near 13. I ran down Somerville Ave for a while, turned around after a bit, and ran back.

I'm happier to report that I at least found the turn coming back.

Upon returning home, I Google-Mapped my very odd route and discovered I had only run 9.6 miles--not 13. That said, my cell phone is still in my possession; at no point during the run did I actually feel lost; and unlike the last time I ran by myself in the dark, I didn't trip and bruise anything. I'm calling this a success.

13-mile/9.6 mile run complete.