WORKOUT: 5.81 miles/50 mins & 10 secs.
What an adventure. I met up with my running group today. Everyone in the group is extremely nice and pretty much all but a couple have a "beginner runner" status. Which is totally great, I love the diversity of levels we are all on. Today's scheduled run was in the city. Yes, the city of Nashville. As in...downtown, cars everywhere, small sidewalks, CITY. Even the idea was scary. Our trainer (bless her little heart...southern saying around here) forgot the print offs of the route, so we had nothing to go off of except an email on our phones with an attached map (for those of us with smart phones) to glance at WHILE RUNNING.
 I have tried to pay attention to each runner's pace over the last few runs, and at this point in time, only one girl is near mine. So obviously, we paired up. We know very little about each other at this point, but it's ok. I guess that's the nice thing about running groups...you can just run together and eventually you get to know each other? IDK. I've never done this before, but I'm assuming that's how it all happens. Well, we chatted a bit before we all took off, and she told me she ran cross-country in high school. Fantastic, she should be able to run this 4.8 mile pretty easy with me then, right? I quickly threw it out there that I'm directionally challenged. Even if I have a map, that's just not good enough. I need a GPS with a British woman's accent telling me where and when to turn. My new friend, Hope, then informed me that she also has no sense of direction. I'm thinking, "Oh, crap." But I just nod my head and laugh. Hope and I quickly learned that our original 4.8 mile route that was on my phone was not going to go so smoothly.
First of all, how do you run with someone you barely know? I wanted to run my normal speed, and I assumed she did too. That's not enough to go off of, apparently. You get these thoughts in your head while running like, "Is she keeping up with my pace, or am I keeping up with hers? What if she's not used to this speed? Should I slow down in case she wants to? But what if she is totally fine with this speed and only slows down when she sees me slow down because I'm actually slowing down for her but she wouldn't know that? I'll just keep going then. But wait...I could just ask her if she wants to run slower...no, that's insulting. I'd be insulted if someone I was running with said that to me..." So I just stopped thinking about it. At about 3 miles into our run, she was slowing down. Big time. I was realizing her pace was around mine when we weren't going 4+ miles. Crap. Our "recovery station" that the trainer set out on the route was no where to be found, and neither was the street we were looking for. Who knows where that street went because we never found it and supposedly it exists. I still am unconvinced of that, though. Crossing road after road at "cross walks" (which is really dangerous, BTW) we determined we went wrong somewhere. Eventually, we just stopped running and looked at my map on my phone. We realized if we ran on Charlotte Avenue that it would take us to 25th Avenue near where we started. That was great news except it was 2 miles away. That's when Hope chimes in, "I haven't actually run a long distance other than 3 miles in awhile." 
So here we are, over 3 miles into the run, all alone, away from our cars, no water, and I find out she's already nearing her limit. I knew we had to keep running if we ever wanted to get back to our group, so I just did my best to give a pep talk. "You own your legs. Don't let your mind give out before your legs. We've got just 2 miles to go. Just think about anything but running. Focus on your breathing, exhale on your left stride. You got this." Yeah, it seemed to rejuvenate her a bit, thankfully. I didn't want to leave her behind, but I also didn't want to not get a good run in when I woke up at the crack of dawn to meet other runners. We got back into running and realized that Charlotte Avenue isn't a street that many walkers use. There were very few crosswalks. Yep, we had to dart across traffic. 4 lanes of it. Several times. I felt like that poor frog in the game frogger. I feel bad for the frog now, I don't think I could play it again. Haha. Traffic is insanely scary when you aren't buckled up in your vehicle of metal. We determined that God definitely has more work to do with us in this world because we could've died like 4 times. Legit. 
 I can't believe we finally  made it back. We even beat the rest of the group (who did the route just fine at their 12 minute paces) to the starting point. Insane run. I was so distracted with trying to stay alive and find our way back to our starting point that this 5.81 miles were the easiest (on my body) that I've ever run. I hope we never do a city run again...paved trails are the way to go. You only have to worry about a biker speeding by. Not a car. Hope and I might be life-long running partners now. We really formed a bond today and luckily laughed a lot. Sometimes you just have to laugh when you're in a crazy situation. It was either that or cry. Ha!