Week 6 has been the weirdest C25k week so far. Let me tell you a tale...

My development makes a giant horse-shoe shape, with a Cul-de-sac at each end. At the end of our street there is a cul-de-sac where an old woman who is/was very sick. You rarely ever saw her and if you did you would get the impression that a light breeze would blow her away. She was all skin and bones.

Starting late in the summer no one saw her outside anymore and her dog stopped barking at us on our walks. The house was always dark, the papers started to pile up and the grass got really long. One day landscaping company came and cleaned up the lot, but still... no sign of anyone in the house. We assumed the worst. About a month ago, one of the kids in the neighborhood reported seeing an ambulance at her house with someone being wheeled out.

Everyone thought she might have died, but the week before last my neighbor said that he saw her out at night walking with a walker, and a few days later I was sure that I saw her walking down at her end of the street without the need of any aide. I assumed she had to be hospitalized but was out and feeling better. Still there are no lights and no activity at her house.

Friday night I was on my run and it was just a creepy night. We had been talking about her earlier that evening and I decided I wasn't going to run down to her end of the development because I had the heebeegeebees.

I was on a walking interval when a neighbor from the other side of the development (who I do not speak to ever) was backing out of his driveway. He let me walk by and I got ahead of him a bit down the road when he pulled his car up next to me and he rolled down the window...

He looked confused and asked, "Didn't you just have someone with you?"

I sort of snapped back at him, "What the heck did you just say?

Again looking confused he said, "I swear you were walking with a woman when you walked by my house, and as I pulled up behind you she was there, but when I pulled up next to you she was gone. Weird"

My heart literally sunk, "Dude, I'm alone..

He shrugged and started to drive off, and I just ran. I ran the last running interval and straight into my house completely spooked out.

Last night, I did not want to run outside. Our treadmill has been skipping and it's almost dangerous to run on it, but I tried anyways. Beyond the fact that I am now convinced the possibly dead lady down the street is following me around the development... it was pretty cold. I fired up the treadmill but once it got over 4mph it started to stick and skip. I thought I might break my neck so I stopped and cursed out the machine for a while.

I was furious. I didn't want to miss this day but didn't want "possibly dead creepy lady" bugging me either. I put on some warmer clothes and told myself "***k it dude, it can't hurt you". On my warm up I decided to head down towards her house. It's totally dark. To light from a television flicker, nothing. I made the turn and started my 10 minute running interval.

The run felt good. I was warming up from the cold and the air felt easy to breath. My pace was pretty good and I wasn't tiring quickly. Since my development makes that horse-shoe I told you about, I inevitably ended up running back to her end of the street. About 200 yards away I notice that the light is on in the upstairs hallway and as I get close I notice she is standing in the hallway LOOKING RIGHT AT ME out of the from picture window. I mean she was just standing there staring at me as I ran towards her house.

I just stopped. She didn't move either. She just stood there... so I just did an about-face and I booked it in the other direction. I was running so fast that I was completely out of breath at the end of the interval. I decided not to go back to her end of the street but I wanted to finish this run. It's important to me to do this.

I had a 3 minute walking interval that I started when I got around the bend. I was catching my breath and when I got to the SAME SPOT where my neighbor stopped me on Friday and my phone just shut off. I'm totally freaked out at this point.

I wanted to just run home. I looked around a bit and there was no one around. So I held the power button down on the phone and started jogging again. I was pretty tired already but I almost didn't care. When the phone came back on I just looked at the time and ran that remainder of that 10 minute interval. I have no idea what my pace was but I think it probably was one of my better times. I can see that woman's house from my driveway, and when I arrived home I noticed that the lights were all off again...

w.t.f.

Needless to say that tomorrow, when I do W6D3, I'm getting up in the morning to do that run. In fact I'll be getting up in the morning to run from now on.

W1D1 down, many weeks to go. I enjoyed it though.