7 for 7

With Ryan headed off to Vermont this weekend to help at the VT 100 -- go Trail Monsters go!!! -- I knew I wasn't going to have a chance to get in a long run over the next few days. So I decided to let him have a little extra time with Sam this morning and have him drop her off at daycare. That way, I could get in a "long" run before work. Sam and I were up bright and early, so it was no trouble getting out the door at 7:00am for the run. It was bright and sunny, there was no humidity and best of all, the thermometer was reading 58 degrees when I left the house. Ahhh! Heavenly!! It felt wonderful!

My right ankle felt a little twingy (still working on that part of the puzzle, but am going back to see Dr. Jamie later in the month to have him work a little magic on the ankle tightness), so I took the cart path instead of the quarry out to the Heath, just to give things a little more time to warm up before hitting the singletrack. It seemed to work, as I didn't have any trouble as I headed down to the river. Wow, the river was low, lower than I can remember seeing it before, which meant less rapids, but more chances of seeing the neat rock formations along the edge of the riverbank. I found a big feather in one of the open areas down along the river. I don't know if it was from a hawk or an owl, but it was very pretty and had uniform, thin chocolate brown stripes all along it. Neat. As I got further down along the river, I heard a commotion behind me, and peeked back to see a little fawn and its mother bounding across a shallow area in the river. They quickly ducked into the undergrowth and up the hill on the other side, but what a sight! Beautiful!

Other than the deer sighting, I had the woods to myself. Since it was still early morning, there were lots of spider webs to run through :-) The only thing marring the run were the deer flies who hounded me as I stopped to pick a few raspberries in the open field, one of whom bit me! OW!

I got in 7 miles in 1:10 and felt good. What a beautiful morning to be out!