Wednesday Morning 15

We managed to convince Sam that she should sleep on her pillow last night, which was a godsend. (She's still in her crib and typically doesn't use a pillow. She just lays flat in the crib with her "baby," covered up with her two "pretties" (or blankets to the rest of us).) She fell asleep without much coughing and managed to sleep straight through from a little before 7:00 pm until 4:00am. She then went back to sleep until around 5:30 am, at which point she started coughing, which upset her, which made her cough more, and round and round, and so by 5:40, the two of us were downstairs on the couch, reading books and eating pistachios. Yes, she is so weird! Pistachios before 6:00 am - ugh! ;-) In any event, it was nice to get a decent chunk of sleep last night, and I wasn't too concerned with being up so early as I was planning on heading out early to run anyway.

I headed out a little after 7:00 am. It was cool and bright. I knew the golf course wouldn't be open yet, so I planned on hitting the cart paths first. The greens were covered with a light frost, and the half moon hung low and visible in the sky above. Things were very quiet and peaceful. I ran one loop of the course, and when I got back to the clubhouse, there were no cars in the parking lot so I headed out for another loop on the cart paths. I veered off at hole #5 to run the Heath Trail loop and then continued on to finish up the cart paths. By the time I got back to the clubhouse this time, the Garmin was reading close to 9 miles and there were a few cars in the lot, so I decided I would just run the Highland Green road next and figure it out from there. I veered off the road to run the short lollypop down to the river and back, stopping to stretch a bit and open my Gu at the vernal pool on the way back through. When I got to the quarry, I realized that if I cut through the cart path and ran hole #9 that I would get back to the road right around 11.5 miles, which would mean I could then just run the remainder of the Highland Green loop again back home and it should be pretty much exactly 15 miles. Perfect. I did just that, and finished up in 2:19. The course ended up being roughly 9 miles of dirt roads/gravel cart paths, 3 miles of pavement and 3 miles of trails, so it made for a pretty quick 15 miles, which was what I was looking for on a weekday morning. Glad to have finally gotten the miles in. You know, Sunday, Wednesday, it's all the same, right?! ;-)

As for the bird report from the run, it was a fine morning for bird watching. Saw and heard lots of phoebes, chickadees, robins and blue jays, saw one cardinal, heard two woodpeckers and scared up a pair of Northern Flickers from the edge of a swampy area near the beaver dam before hole #8. I saw the flash of yellow on the wings as they took off - neat! Also saw a turkey vulture floating up high, and what I am pretty sure was an American Kestral. I saw it up on the top of a tree, a crow making noise nearby in alarm, and it flew across the golf course to land on another tree. As I ran past, it flew back across the course, and landed on the top of the first tree, its tail flicking as it balanced itself. Cool little falcon.