Outrunning the Rain

I've configured my schedule so that I'm only working until 12:00 on a number of Fridays this summer. Today I ended up working until 12:30 but in theory, that left me somewhere between 3 and 4 hours to do my errands and run before picking Sam up from daycare, and if things got done sooner than later, I could just pick her up earlier. The errands and grocery shopping took longer than I would have thought today, so I didn't end up getting home until 2:30. It wasn't really raining yet, just on and off spitting, so I quickly changed, got my Garmin up and running, did a bit of stretching and headed out the door. I decided to run the 'dump loop,' which is really more like the 'dump lollypop.' Sounds delicious, right? :-)

Headed out the powerlines into the wind with the glowering sky overhead and wondered if I'd made the right decision. Perhaps I should have stuck to the woods for more cover? But then again, I could no doubt run faster on the powerlines and the wide snowmobile/ATV trails through the woods than on the singletrack down by the river so hopefully I could outrun the rain if I just got my 7 miles done fast enough :-) Ha. So, from the start, I had it in my head that I had better 'go, go, go' to beat the rain and get home to get showered to go get Sam. Ended up keeping up a fairly fast for me pace for the whole route. Normally my afternoon runs are sluggish feeling, so it felt good to push it a bit today, and the rain didn't really start until I was headed out the door to pick up Sam. Win!

Flora and fauna notes: A few nice patches of ladyslippers seen, along with some pretty swamp iris and sheep laurel blooming along the powerlines. Lots of false lily of the valley in the woods, and some bunchberry too. Heard the towhee calling and saw some deer prints, but otherwise the woods were pretty quiet.