Saturday, November 22, 2003

Trail Note: Hearty Souls

This is a belated trail note from last weekend, intended to inspire me to run this weekend. After some glorious New England style autumn weather through October and into the first half of November, I flew back into Seattle last weekend to find real Seattle fall weather: a cold rain. I ran a slow 5 miles on Saturday morning, happy to stretch my legs after the long travel day on Friday. Sunday, however, was a little harder. Jeff and I had planned our route in advance: the 8 mile trip up to Greenlake, around, and back. It's a beautiful route, taking us past the Zoo, through Woodland Park, around Greenlake, and back through Freemont. The trees were at the height of their colors, and were just starting to fall to create gorgeous red and gold carpeted sidewalks. The weather was not so beautiful: 40 degrees and rain. Not drizzle, but a hard rain. We must have stared at the rain for 20 minutes, all dressed in running gear: caps, windbreakers, tights, and gloves, trying to talk ourselves into getting out into it.

We eventually got out there, and started running. We kept going the entire time at what felt to be a consistent 9 minute mile pace. By the time we were leaving the Greenlake trail, however, my knees were hurting, my feet were sodden, and I was getting cold again. The last few miles were certainly not fun, and the beautiful leaves beneath my feet were no longer Tolkien-like carpets of gold, but rather trip hazards in disguise.

We finished cold, wet, but happy to be finished. I'm glad that we got out and did it, and felt better the rest of the week for the run. Today I'm going to try to get a 4 or 5 miler in along with a longer run tomorrow. It's even colder this weekend than last (it snowed Thursday and yesterday!), so once again, I'll have to be a Hearty Soul.

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