I had a better than expected 6 miler yesterday. I've been having such bad runs for the past month or so, it was tough to even get out the door. What probably helped was changing my route up a little. I've been running these neighborhoods around here for nearly five years now and as lucky as I am to have such a beautiful and interesting variety of routes, I think I need to mix things up a bit.

For some reason, I hardly ever run through the "historical" district of midtown... the area between 10th and Ponce, and Monroe and Peachtree. There's no particular reason why, except maybe that the first few times I ran back there, some of the streets twisted and turned in such unexpected ways that I felt a little lost. And even though it is a "historical" area and there are some beautiful homes on the tree-lined streets, overall it's not as pretty as Ansley or the Highlands.

Anyway I decided to run around in that area on Saturday and it went rather well. You can't get much mileage in there, so I added a few different loops around Piedmont Park. I timed my last mile on a marked 1 mile loop around the lap and finished with an 8:30 pace for the last mile. Overall for the 6.12 mile route, I had a 9:18 pace - which is okay considering how unmotivated I've been lately.

I'm making great progress on the gift I'm working on for someone. It should be ready - it has to be ready - next weekend. Once it's been given, I'll post it here. Very happy with how it's going so far.