Road 14

I went back and forth a number of times this morning - road? trail? road? trail? - before finally deciding it might be the best thing to just hit the roads for my run today. I knew I had a 14-mile loop that I could just go run on without having to think about mileage and how to connect the dots to get 14, like I would no doubt be doing on the trails. That won out in the end. I headed out around 9:30, greeted with sunny skies, rising temps and what seemed to be an almost no wind. I ran down Main Street and out to Foreside, where I meandered out along the river, through the fields and marshes on the essentially flat road to its junction with Rt. 24. There, halfway through the run, the route gets a bit rolling as it heads back to town. I turned into the wind too - so much for the thought that there was no wind out there! Ah well. It was a pretty nice run, fairly consistent until the final two miles, when I started to slow down a bit. (I did take the powerlines back at Highland Green Road, which definitely slowed me down, though, so I didn't just totally die.... When I looked at my Garmin data, it was the glaring 10:00/mile in the midst of all the 8:xxs :-) ) Made it back in 2:01 and called it good for the day.

The run was uneventful except for one strange interaction. Along Foreside Road, near the sledding hill/playground area, a car slowed next to me, headed in the same direction. I had this feeling they were going to stop and ask me directions, as the driver side window was down and the woman driving sort of looked out at me. The car pulled over into the parking lot, and the passenger, who appeared to be a guy our age or slightly older, got out. I was essentially parallel with them so I smiled at him, to which he said, "You're running! You're running! You're hot! You're hot!" and got right back in the car. Seriously dude. Aren't you too old for that sort of stuff? Honestly! Other than that, all I came across was birds singing, a woodpecker pecking and a lot of deer and turkey prints in the snow :-)