Run, Run, Run

In my head, when I was thinking about this week's running, I had been gearing up for the Merrimack River Trail Race, which happened this morning. Well, things didn't quite go as planned this week, so unfortunately, "The Rivah" ended up not being in the cards. However, we did decide we would still go south to spend the weekend at Ryan's parents. His sister and brother-in-law were coming up, so it seemed like a good chance to see everyone, and to get a little distraction for the weekend, both for Ryan and Sam. Unfortunately, that didn't quite go as planned either, as Ryan started to feel a bit feverish last night, and decided traveling was just not a good idea. However, this morning, he pretty much told Sam and I to get in the car and go down for the day, and leave him in peace to rest! I was a bit discombobulated by this turn of events, but I raced around gathering things up, and we headed out. It was a great day of visiting, and I'm glad we took the drive. Sam had a lot of fun with Grammie, Grampie, Auntie Meg and Uncle Chris! Thanks guys!

All this means that running today also didn't go as planned either :-) Yesterday, since I knew the race was out, I figured I would stick with a pretty mellow week, and just went out for a quick run before work. I headed down the powerlines to Topsham Crossing for a short 3 miler. It was chilly out, so things were fairly solid, but more and more bare ground (ie. mud) is beginning to appear. Today, I had hoped to go over to Bradley Palmer for a trail run on bare, dry ground while Sam slept and Ryan visited with his family, but when we decided to go down and back in one day, I didn't really want to spend more time driving, so I settled for a nice 5 mile road run in the middle of the day. It was beautiful out! 65 and sunny. A bit windy, but boy, did it feel great to be running in shorts and a t-shirt, and to feel good! I think that after two mellow recovery weeks, my body is ready for a bit more mileage. I ran the 5 miles at 7:38 pace, and although I was working a bit, things felt pretty comfortable. Hopefully I'll get out for a longer run tomorrow to start things off in the right direction.

In flora and fauna news: I've seen a lot of cool birds lately, including the osprey returning to nest along Rt. 1, and a flock of 10 Great Blue Heron flying over the house yesterday morning in geese-like formation. I love this time of year as the birds come back! Today's run didn't yield much of excitement bird-wise, but I did see a number of little turtles and mallards in one of the ponds I passed, and ran across a decent size Garter snake sunning itself at the edge of the road. I tried to scare him off the pavement, but he hissed and lunged at me, so I let him be, and hoped for the best. I also saw a fox, a porcupine and several Red-tailed Hawks along the highway's edge as Sam and I drove home as the sun set.