Figured out a couple things

First thing I figured out... I can get past this blood donation weakness thing by following the standard runner's mantra of not going out too fast. The first 3-4 times I ran after donating, I went out at my usual pace and burned out pretty quickly. This morning, I knew what I was in for and started off slow and steady. I essentially had a negative split, aside from mile 7 which included the run up Middle Rd from Rt 2 - a hefty hill that I can't fault myself for slowing down on...

Nothing wrong with that... Those times as a whole aren't great compared to my pre-donation pace, but they are light years ahead of the struggles I've had for the past 2 weeks - I never slowed down or walked unlike all other runs since the blood donation.

The next thing I figured out is that running the Division section with the Rt 95 and Rt 4 on/off ramps is just fine before 6 AM on a Sunday (and probably Saturday). I left the house this AM at 5:45 and made it through that section without issue on my way west of Rt 2.

Pretty slow week - I knocked out another portion of the Tanglewood area on Weds then took some time off to recover.

This morning's 8 mile run was to finish off Stone Ridge. A TON of houses for sale back there - beautiful neighborhood with some houses that back up to the EG golf course. Very similar in design to the Cindyann neighborhood, so I'm thinking it might have been the same builder...

Overall, here's what the map is looking like:

I'm focusing on north of Middle (long runs) and east of Rt 4 (medium / long runs). I think that might build up my endurance enough to venture southwest...

One other thing I'll point out before I wrap up. My new Garmin watch can download apps, and I pulled down something calls dwMap. It's fantastic for this endeavor - it allows me to map out my runs on a website and then push the map to my watch. That is priceless when it comes to all the backtracking, dead-ends, etc. - there are some cases where I can't remember if the dead-end that I need to knock off is straight ahead or to the left, and heading to the non-dead-end means a return trip to that area to simply cross off the dead-end. It also incorporates all of the standard Garmin tracking - speed, distance, pace, heart rate, etc. - so it's a very nice bonus. I've considered carrying a piece of paper with turn-by-turn instructions, but this seems to be footing the bill for me. More about it here: http://dynamic.watch/.