If you reach Chippewa, you've gone too far

Those that know me know that I have a terrible sense of direction.  I also have a terrible sense of time.  Typically, this works out fine for me and I just wander through life, slightly oblivious but happy.  

I planned to run my 20-mile run in Buffalo, since I'm visiting my parents for Easter break.  My dad and I mapped out a route the night before (and he tried to make the route as simple as possible, due to the aforementioned lack of a sense of direction), and I even wrote the route down to carry with me just in case.  I felt pretty confident in myself.  About 3 miles in, my mp3 player died (you would think I would have learned my lesson by now, but yet again I forgot to charge it) so I was stuck listening to the sounds of the traffic and my brain.  After awhile, I got the sinking feeling that I may have missed my turn.  I wasn't sure though, so I just kept running.  I knew the turn was about 40 minutes into the run, but since I didn't have music as a reference point for the passing of time, I had no idea how far I had gone.  So I just kept running.  It eventually dawned on my that I was carrying my cell phone, and therefore had a clock the whole time.  I had been running for over an hour and a half (you know, only 50 minutes past where I was supposed to turn).  Whoops.

As I debated what to do, I decided to turn up Chippewa (for those Pittsburgh people, it's similar to the South Side).  I ran past beer bottles, piles of trash and an old man who started yelling at me.  The entire street smelled like beer and it was actually pretty depressing.  I was able to get myself turned back around and headed toward home.  On the way back I found the park that I had completely missed before (mind you, it's not a small park at all), and started to run around the track at the park.  At that point I needed water, and thought I remembered drinking fountains at the park.  Those that have gone camping with me know that I become slightly hysterical at the thought of being without water.  Food?  Fine, I can live without it.  Water - that's a different story.  When you don't drink water, you die.  So I ran around the park, saw that the bathrooms were closed for the season and started to get freaked out that they might have turned off the drinking fountains (mind you, I was in the middle of the suburbs, I was not going to die of dehydration).  When I finally found the drinking fountain I joyously filled my water bottle and looked at it - the water was nowhere near clear.  I thought about this for a minute, then dumped out the bottle and tried again.  This time it was closer to clear - worked for me.  I decided that if it was going to kill me, it was better than dying by dehydration (did I mention I get slightly dramatic 15 miles into my run?).

The rest of the run was relatively uneventful.  It was strange not actually knowing how far I was going.  I kept trying to calculate how far I had gone based on time, but every time I tried to add the numbers I got a different answer.  So I just headed for home and decided that I would calculate it at home, then run more if necessary.  I put my route into the map - I had run 22.5 miles.  This will be the only time in my life that I can say I accidentally ran 22.5 miles.  

21 days to go.  You know, I'm beginning to think I can actually do this thing.