12 in River Landing

After Sam woke up this morning, she went in and read a few books on my parent's bed with them, as I sat out in the kitchen, quietly drinking my coffee and watching the sun rise above the frosted grass and the thin layer of low-lying fog. Beautiful. I waited a while longer before heading out on my run, but it was still crisp and cool when I got out around 8:00. I was glad I had packed a pair of tights. It actually felt like winter. I had an idea of a route in mind. I think you could probably wander this community for 20 miles or so if you ran all the streets, so I figured I wouldn't have trouble coming up with 12 miles. I ran out to the River Lodge on the same trail I had run the other day. Mist was rising from the river, and it was very peaceful out in the woods. Once again, I took the nature trail back to the pavement, and then at the club house, turned left and out to "the bluffs," the edge of the community. It is fairly far out there, and seems sort of desolate, but there are a few houses here and there. When I got to the end, I looped back around, taking one or two side roads so that I would be around 8 miles when I got back to the club house. From there, I ran down to the entrance and along the gravel path by the berm, arriving back at my parent's house at exactly 12.5 miles. Perfect.

While I wasn't all that keen on running all those miles on the roads, the one nice thing about a very flat, mostly road, route is I was able to crank out the miles a bit more quickly than I might have otherwise, finishing is 1:43. I also was out on a beautiful crisp morning, and saw a lot of wildlife. During the time I was out exploring the complex, I saw: 4 great blue herons, 1 egret, 1 bald eagle, 4 deer, 7 cardinals, 1 belted kingfisher, 1 red-headed nuthatch, a handful of bluebirds, lots of blue jays, chickadees, juncos, sparrows and other unidentifiable LBJs (little brown jobbies :-)), 1 flicker, 1 red-headed woodpecker, and what I think were 2 grebes in one of the many ponds I passed. With the mix of ponds, pine forest, deciduous trees, open fields and a fair amount of undeveloped land along the river and the golf courses, this certainly seems to be a great area for bird watching, which makes what would otherwise be fairly ho-hum running a lot more fun for me!

After I got back from my run, we went up to the pool. Sam was much braver this time around, and walked right down the ramp. We took some small soft balls for her to throw around, and wow! She has a great overhead throw! Definitely a lefty too. It was pretty interesting watching her try to throw right-handed; you could tell it took a lot more concentration and the results were not as good. We did a bit of kicking and floating too, and she handled the few mouthfuls of water she got much better than the other day. We lasted about a 1/2 hour before her little lips started to turn blue and we headed home for lunch and naptime.

Here are a few photos from our pool time!