Good Deed of the Day

On Halloween during an afternoon run, I helped a lost bicyclist who dropped his wallet and became separated from his friends. The reason why I know about the wallet is because I found it. My initial reaction was concern - what a bummer to lose all of his I.D. and credit cards - followed by annoyance, since this meant trekking it three miles to the nearest post office. About a minute later, the wallet's owner - a young guy from overseas in a suit riding a bicycle - approached me and asked if I had seen it. The picture on his I.D. seemed to match and I handed it to him. Grateful, he also asked directions to a mall where he was supposed to meet a group of people. Unfortunately, he wasn't close by and giving directions defied easy explanation.

Short of ideas, I offered to lead him there as I finished up my run. I wasn't being super generous; the mall also happened to be close to my final destination. Not only that, but I also felt bad for the guy: English is not his first language, he was lost in a foreign country and the sky started to get dark. It might have been odd to him that some strange runner offered to guide him via dark underpasses and isolated stretches of forest, but I did return his wallet, right? There was a steady stream of other runners on the trail, making this all appear a bit normal. I noticed, however, that even though he was on a bike and I was on foot, he continued to hang at least 50 meters behind me. Maybe he was just being careful, maybe I ran faster than usual, or maybe he's just a slow bicyclist.

Anyhow, I led him to the mall and bid him safe travels. Helping him did come at the cost of ruining what could have been a pretty good training run, though. I covered the first two miles in 7:00 and 7:02, and ran the last three miles at an average 8:00 pace, but this included stopping every half mile to wait for him to catch up and guide him. A small price to pay to help out a fellow traveler. Altogether, my training runs these past two weeks include:

October 27: Three miles on a treadmill (10:04, 7:15, 6:30)

October 29: One mile warm up, 2 x 6 hill sprints, one mile cool-down

October 31: Five miles, three of which was Man vs. Bike

November 3: Six miles (8:00, 7:46, 8:15, 6:58, 8:11) with a half mile warm up and cool down

November 5: 3.5 miles on the treadmill (8:40, 8:03, 6:16, half mile cool-down)

November 8: 5 miles - forgot to recharge my GPS watch, but the pace seemed pretty good

I have a tentative 5K time trial next week that I'm honestly not really prepared for, but I'm overdue to put in a time.