The answer is....

Thanks for your guesses, everybody!





The answer is....





It's a drawing of my run yesterday: 18 miles all completed around an indoor track. Crazy? uh-huh. Perhaps. Consider, though, that the outside temperature was 96 degrees. Still think I'm nuts? nope.





12.65 loops around the little indoor track at the gym = 1 mile. That means I circled and circled the elliptical 228 times. over and over and over. and over. and over. My only hope of averting insanity was my iPod.





Periodically, other people came.... and then they went. They walked around the track. They talked. Some others came and jogged. Some sprinted around a couple of times. Still, there I was. Running around. and around. and around.





Somewhere in the middle of mile 13 or 14 my iPod displayed a low battery sign. I was terrified. I pictured a scream at a horror movie, juxtaposed agonizingly against a background of eery silence. Noooooooooooooooooo.





I put a plan into action. I decided that fast forwarding past the songs that didn't exactly match my cadence was sucking up too much battery power. I switched from random "shuffle songs" to my running pace playlist and refrained from fast forwarding, turning up the volume up or down... anything that would suck the life out of the only thing keeping me going.





I forgot my Gu (energy gel packs), so the only thing I had to keep myself going was water, but that's good for training... teaches your body to work with less.





In the end, I did the 228 laps. In the climate-controlled interior of the gym. 18 miles around a little radius of 66 feet... I know this because, even though I have a master's degree in English (see what I'm doing with it?!), I figured out the radius of the circle I ran... see below.











I don't know which makes me more proud - figuring out the radius of the circle or running 18 miles around it....