The universe was telling me something

Do you ever have those times when the universe is trying to tell you something?  I felt like that today on my run.

I haven't run since my 16 miles on Saturday.  Not exactly what I had planned, but it just happened.  So when I started out this morning my legs were still pretty stiff.  No big deal, I would just use this run to work them out.  My 3 miles today were going to be easy because I had to make a stop to gather pine cones.  (I'm in charge of the craft for Thing 1's class at school on Thursday.)

Almost a mile in, we made our stop to gather pine cones.  I stopped my Garmin.  (I didn't want pine cone collection to count in my time.)  Apparently, once pine cone collection was over, I forgot to start my watch back.  Oops.

About one fourth of a mile down the road, we ran into another problem.  About 10 yards of sidewalk was missing.  (Seriously)  If I was by myself I would have jumped out onto the road even though it is a pretty busy road.  However, I had Thing 2 and Thing 3 with me, so we had to travel where to sidewalk was missing.  This woke up thing 3 who often gets his morning nap in while I run.

I am guessing, about a half mile after that we ran into huge leaf piles that were hiding mud puddles from where people let their sprinklers run too long.  I had to walk in order to avoid a disasterous fall and muddy feet.

Once we got past that, I started running again, only to find more leaf piles hiding mud puddles.  This time my feet got soaked.

At this point I was ready to be done.  I wanted to know how much farther I had to go. I looked down at my watch and realized it wasn't going.  I took that as the final sign that this run just wasn't meant to be, so I decided to head back toward our house.

 I was able to map my run and determine that I did get my 3 miles done, but it definetly wasn't pretty or my best work.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.