A Strange Incident

Slowly but surely, I think I am beginning to round back into shape. I still have some pain in my knee, but with each week it is diminishing - I am seeing progress. Take last week for example, I ran 5 times - something I have not been able to do since getting injured.

Monday: approx 6 miles
Wednesday: approx 4 miles
Friday: approx 6 miles
Saturday: approx 4 miles
Sunday: 8.2 miles

This is not an overwhelming amount of mileage, but considering where I have been I'll take it. All days except for Sunday represent estimates. I was really beginning to get curious about pace and what my real distances were so on Sunday I took the trouble to measure my run online. Lo and behold - my estimate of 7.5 miles was short by quite a bit. Essentially, as part of recovery I was estimating my distances based on my relaxed running pace last year prior to the injury. Typically, I had been running about 8:20 per mile during these sessions. Given that I was running coming out of an injury I had guessed my pace would be no better. Making my calculations, however, I now realize that I am considerably faster right now than I was last year. The 8.2 I ran on Sunday worked out to be about a 7:30 pace. Considering I was running a easy relaxed pace this is much better than I expected. I guess losing 20 pounds has had some impact.

Now to the strange incident. During Sunday's run I had something happen to me that has never happened before. I was running along my usual route when a police car headed towards me with its lights flashing. Thinking that it was going to stop a car for speeding heading in the opposite direction, I remained blissfully ignorant to it. A couple of moments later, I noticed that I was the focus of the officers intentions as the car slowed down and the officer made a waiving motion for me to stop (I can't say pull over as I was already on the shoulder of the road). Anyway, I was perplexed as to what was going on and to make light of things asked the officer, "Am I going to fast?" As it turns out, this wasn't the issue. Currently, there is a criminal in the Halifax area who escaped from prison guards enroute from a prison to day surgery at a local hospital. He is considered armed and dangerous and they, the police, happened to be tracking him a mile or so from where I was running. Apparently, runners can spook tracking dogs causing a potential incident and can be considered "hostage bait" for escapees. So the officer kindly asked me to change my route for the day and rerouted me in the opposite direction. It was all perfectly explainable, but quite strange to come to the realization that your are being stopped by the police while running.