Once of the best/worst parts of moving to a new neighborhood is finding new running routes.

It can be the best if your new neighborhood is runner friendly. It can be the worst if that's not the case.

My previous neighborhood was not super runner friendly. You may remember how much I complained about it when we first moved into that apartment. Mainly I hated all the traffic lights and how generally unsafe I felt for a while.

My new neighborhood on the other hand is a million times better for running for a whole bunch of reasons.



First, it's actually a neighborhood. I love running through it and seeing all the really cute houses here. Some of them are old and historic and some of them have been totally modernized. But they all have personality.

I also love all the green space. There are yards here and lots of parks and open space. It makes for some really pretty scenery.



We used to live right downtown, which was super convenient for so many things, but meant I was trapped between two really major roads and all the traffic lights and high-rise buildings that came with that.

One of the other awesome things about being away from the high-rises is that my Garmin doesn't take a million years to find satellites anymore. I had basically stopped using it in part because I was injured all the time and trying to not worry about pace, but also because I hated waiting around for 10 minutes before I could even start running while it tried to find a signal.

Since discovering that it works normally here, I've taken it on almost all of my recent runs. I'm still not worrying too much about my pace these days, but I like having the data.

Plus without all the traffic lights, I'm not constantly having to pause my watch every time I get stuck at a red light. Now when I set out to do a three mile run it only takes me about 33 minutes door-to-door, whereas it used to take me 45-50 with all the traffic light stoppages.


Slow and steady data!

The other thing that is I guess a positive when thinking about my ability to build endurance and stuff is that there are hills everywhere here. Sometimes I hate it, but I'm trying to appreciate that the hills will help me be a stronger, hopefully less-injury prone, runner. I don't think I realized how flat it was downtown until I noticed all the long, steep climbs here. I'm sure I'll be cursing them when it's a million degrees out this summer, but for now, trying to think of them as a positive.

I'm still spending a bit of time figuring out where I feel safest when I run. It's not like we moved to a utopian neighborhood with no crime, we still live in DC, and I want to make sure I'm picking routes where I'll generally feel safe running when it's dark and I'm by myself.

Right now, I'm doing all my runs during lunch time because it helps break up my quarantine days. I'm trying to do a bunch of different routes so I get a sense of where I'd feel most comfortable. I generally try to pick routes that are well-lit by street lights, have a decent amount of traffic and where I'm never incredibly isolated.

I think I've found a fairly safe three-mile loop. I've done a five-miler that I really enjoyed on a Saturday morning, but I don't think it'd be a good contestant for an early morning run because a good chunk of it was on a pretty isolated stretch of road. I also found a four mile route that also seems to have some promise.

Overall it's been really fun exploring this new neighborhood and finding new places to run. And since running is about the only reason I have to go outside these days, I feel like we moved at just the right time and I'm super grateful for that.

Yes I appreciate that at this point March is basically over and I'll be having another book summary to write up soon, but I wanted to make sure to share my February reads before I forgot.

February wasn't the best month of reading for me -- mainly because we bought a house and it was a complete whirlwind experience.

We learned a house that was in our price range and met most of our basic requirements went on the market while we were out of town with friends. We rushed to go see it Sunday night when we got home, re-did all our pre-approval stuff on Monday because our previous one expired and then had our offer in on Tuesday by 9 p.m.

A little after 10 p.m. that night, we got a text from our realtor that our offer had been accepted.

From there I felt like I spent basically every free minute reading and signing documents from either the realtor or our lender before we finally closed on March 13 -- about a month after we made the initial offer.

All of that meant I was often too exhausted to actually do much reading. So, I only finished five books in February.

Five Stars

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
I know the author of this book has a problematic history, but this book is beautifully written and pulled me in almost from the get-go. I loved how Kya used animal's lives and mating history to teach herself the ins and outs of human interaction after her family abandons her in the marsh. I didn't see the twist at the end of the book coming, though perhaps I should have. Highly recommend.

Four Stars

Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand
Oh man after binging a bunch of Elin Hilderbrand books last month and getting a mixed bag, it was so nice to pick this one up and just fall in love with the characters and the story. This book was long, but it sucked me in, and I couldn't put it down. I wanted to know what was happening in Vicki's cancer treatments and if Melanie was ever going to tell her husband that she's pregnant. I wanted to know what was happening in Brenda's lawsuit and how for the three of them escaping to Nantucket might be the solution to give them the time and space to process the very big things happening in their lives.

After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I really, really enjoyed this book and it's look at a failing marriage and the less traditional route the couple took to try to fix things. This was an incredibly fast read, and even though I can't even fathom doing what this couple did, I was fascinated and couldn't put this book down.

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (And More Life to Live) by Eve Rodsky
I'd seen this book written up everywhere, and as someone trying to figure out how to equitably split household duties with a partner, I was intrigued. The book definitely didn't disappoint. I thought there were some really practical suggestions and reminders on how to make sure neither person goes insane while trying to juggle all the household stuff on top of other life stuff.

Three Stars

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
This was a good book in that I wanted to keep reading it to see what happened, but I mainly didn't like what happened, if that makes sense. I couldn't stand a few of the characters, and I felt like we never even got to know some of the other characters. There was a lot going on, and the book at times felt disjointed as you jumped from place to place and character to character. I couldn't keep track of which kids belonged to which parents (maybe that was the point), but I didn't like that. Largely I found this book frustrating, but intriguing.

I've opened my blog editor so many times to start writing a post over the past couple of weeks, but the words just haven't come. My husband and I just bought a house and I've wanted to write about that and about getting to find new running routes in my new neighborhood. And I still haven't written my February book post. Or my mid-way through March running post.

But it's hard to sit down and write about "normal" things when nothing really feels normal to me.


After we settled on the house, when you could still grab a drink at your favorite neighborhood spot.

Some days, I'm coping ok with that, and some days, my extroverted soul feels so out of sorts. I don't know what to do with myself with the deep lack of human interaction, and some days that's really evident in my demeanor and energy levels.

On the work front, things are about as normal as they can be. The work itself has changed a bit to support covid-19 communication efforts. That's stressful, but our team is awesome, and emergency-related work is something we're used to. I'm also used to working from home 3 to 4 days per week since my office relies heavily on telework in normal times. So we were more prepared than many to switch to full time telework.

But in normal times, when I would close my laptop after a day of working from home, I typically had something to look forward to in the evenings -- often a workout class at a gym, sometimes my book club or dinner with friends.

Basically something that would bring me in contact with other people.

I've felt the absence of that acutely over the past week.

And it's going to be our reality for a little while. So I'm trying to figure out how to make sure I don't go completely insane.

Getting outside for some long walks has been helpful. We're generally luckily that in the DC-area the weather has been fairly mild making walks a pretty easy thing to do. I've been using some of the nicer days to explore our new neighborhood while listening to podcasts and audio books.



I'm also trying to figure out what a new workout routine looks like. I've never been more grateful that running is my favorite workout since it's perfect for this whole social distancing stuff. But with all my injuries, yoga, barre classes and swimming have been really important cross-training for me.

Swimming is not an option with all the pools closed. But many of my favorite fitness studios are trying to figure out live-stream options for their classes.

Plus, I've been taking advantage of Openfit too for their wide selection of workout videos. If you're looking for a yoga class that will help mellow you out, I highly recommend the yin yoga flow from Openfit. (If you want to try out Openfit, they're offering a 30-day free trial. Just go to Openfit.com/friendsandfamily and use the code FRIENDSFAM. Nope, I'm not getting paid to promote this).

The other piece I'm trying to figure out is how to still "see" people even if that means virtually. Tomorrow I'm having "dinner" with friends. We're going to order takeout from our favorite places and then get on a Google Hangout while we eat together and catch up. My husband's softball team did a virtual happy hour last week over Google Hangout, and it was just really nice to catch up with friends. It's obviously not the same as being together in-person, but I'm hoping it will help fill the my need for human interaction, while at the same time prevent me from driving my introverted husband completely insane.

I don't know how long this will be our reality, but I know for myself I need to figure out what a "new normal" looks like. Given all my new-found solo time, maybe I'll actually get better about blogging more frequently. If nothing else, I promise to at least get that February book post up soon.

I meant to write a running check-in post half way through February, but I just never got around to it. And maybe it's good I didn't because the first part of the month started out a bit slow on the running front.

I only got in one run during the first week in February.

But each week since then I've hit my goal of three runs per week. That seems like such a modest goal compared to where my running used to be, but right now, I'm just excited that I'm building some consistency.



None of my runs in February were especially long or fast. My longest was a five miler last week. Most other runs were three miles with a handful of four milers thrown in.

A lot of my runs ended up being lunch time runs because I couldn't drag myself out of bed in the mornings. I know I'm most consistent when I run in the morning before the craziness of the day distracts me, but I was happy that even on the days I couldn't face either the cold temperatures or the early hours that I still ran at lunch.

I think the biggest improvement in my running this month is that easy runs sometimes actually feel easy. It's been a long, long time since I've been able to say that.

I've actually started thinking about some potential races too. A friend of mine loves the Crystal City 5K series in April, and that seems like it could be a fun way to get back into the racing world.

I'm also seriously considering the Baltimore 10 Miler in June. It's one of my favorite races because it's so well run (and because they give out really awesome swag). It would give me an excuse to gently increase my mileage over the next several months. But I'm a bit nervous to pull the trigger on registration because I've had such bad luck with injuries. So I'll probably see how things go for a bit yet before actually signing up.

It's definitely fun to start thinking about possible races again though. And as the weather starts to warm up and the days start getting longer, I'm hoping it will continue to get easier for me to fit runs in.