More things that glow at 4:00 AM

Artist's rendering

Today's run (street): 2.4 miles at 9:14 per mile

I was hoping for some relief from the heat after yesterday and the weekend but I wasn't prepared for the blast of cold air that I felt when I stepped outside this morning. I'm not complaining -- it was fantastic. The change in weather inspired me to take a different route than usual. For the first half of my run I chose some different roads and also followed streets in the opposite direction than I usually run them. That small change makes a big difference in terms of novelty. I fixed my headlamp problem so that was one less issue to address today and I felt more energized in my run than any other in recent memory. Unless you count my last race.

I encountered three cats and two rabbits along the way, but with the temperature at 63 degrees the fireflies weren't glowing this morning. I did see a strange sight along one street though. A house that was under construction had one of those large storage containers parked in the driveway. All four corners of the container had segmented lights running top to bottom that emitted an eerie glow. It looked like a spaceship sitting there among the houses. About halfway through my run I glanced at the Garmin and saw that I was tracking at about a 9:30 pace and I knew I could do better than that. I picked up my speed and ended up gaining back enough time to push my overall pace to 9:14 which is (according to Daily Mile) the fifth fastest run that I've done over the last four weeks. I'm not sure what that means except that I haven't run below 9:20 too often in recent days. If tomorrow is equally comfortable I'll look forward to pushing even harder. There's a long weekend coming up and I'm hoping to accumulate some good mileage during my days off.