In awe

I had one of the best runs last night. It was just 10k. Just nice distance. I ran too many long miles and those were slugfest. I like short and fast runs.

It felt fast to me though the time showed otherwise. I felt I ran the fastest ever. Zoom Zoom. Due to corona virus, there have not been any 5K or 10K in the area. I use 5K and 10K as a stress test, that is, to run my heart out. For some reason, I could not run fast if I feel it is a ‘training’ run.

Normally last couple weeks, I did not have the motivation to do night runs. Either I was hungry, tired, sleepy, cold, or just wanted to watch youtube videos. I was slacking. The fear of lack of training for my race could not move me out of the door.

Yet last night, I faced with all the same situation. I was cold after leaving work. I was wearing three or 4 layers and was still cold. I had not eaten dinner. The sun has set (we turned our clock back so now it gets dark after ,5:30). Funny story, I think the construction people in the area forgot about the early darkness, they were still doing road work in the dark! I thought that was funny! Oops.

Any way, we had the coldest night so far. I made up my night to suit up and stepped out. I did a loop around my house. Did not feel like I was doing it. Feet did not want to run. However, my body started to warm up. So I stopped at my house and delayered. I dropped my two jackets. Took off my long sleeves and only have a tee on. I wrapped a glow jacket around me and headed out the second time.

The cold evening air felt alive! I loved it. I stretched my legs and ran. It was cold but alive at the same time. Originally I wanted only to do 3 miles but it was not enough. Halfway through, I decided to stay out a bit longer.

People at a church gave me a chill for a different reason. I did not expect anybody therrle but then cars started pulling in. They had an evening prayer virgil for the election today. The place was dark and it was just spooky as I ran across it. I felt better once I made the connection that they had a special prayer night. My church also sent out similar announcement – to pray for our nation (I think mostly so that Prez Trump would win). There though kind of panic in our area of fear of rioting. Stores in DC were boarded up. Though Virginia is calm.

I turned around and ran back home.

Why I wrote about the run? I had a thought this morning while in the shower. (Oh my the way, I was freezing once I got back in the house. I had to put back on 4 layers of clothes and were shaking in my bed.) My thought was our life consists of tiny events like a run here and there. It is like those tiny gears in a mechanical watch. The tiny gears drive the bigger gears, and those drive even larger gears so forth.

I have been only blogged about ‘big events’ relating to my runs but forgot about the smaller yet boring daily runs. Maybe because I felt they were not as important.

I actually have something I wanted to write but did not get a chance. On Sunday, I got my act together and went out to the Seneca Trail to preview the course (part of it) for my race.

I glad I went because I spent about three hours looking for that one turn off that looked weird on the map. I traveled about 8 miles back and forth at that particular point searching it. Some people pointed me here and there. I actually got in my car and ‘case’ the neighborhood to find where the trail ends. Glad no one called the cops on me. Eventually I found something I thought that would be it and decided to go home. I ran into a local trail runner and I popped the question if she knew where the course turns. She said yes, she will be running in the race two and she knew exactly where I was talking about. She said she volunteered at that turn in a previous years and noted some people missed the turn. She offerred to lead me there. I went with her and indeed, it was sneaky because it was not a path and unmarked in any maps. The whole point of this narative is I felt a bit relieved, I resolved one suspicious turn for my race!

I might write why this is important in another blog post about the seneca run.

OK that is all today. Outtake: I am looking forward to a big race so I can write about. Sometimes though a small nightly run is a gem.