Evening Run

After all the hubbub of the weekend (son graduating, relatives here...) all I wanted to do yesterday was sleep. Since it was another PNW Triumvirate Day (grey, cool, damp) it was difficult to not give in to the sofa - so I didn't fight it. I just spent the afternoon hours catching up on sleep. By early evening the grey was getting lighter and the sun was making an attempt to shine through the clouds. I, however, still felt like my blood was as thick as cold honey so I called my running partner and we both agreed to do a late evening run. We started out at 8pm-ish and it was bright grey and dry. I do believe there was even blue in parts of the sky. We chose a route through a neighborhood that we hadn't run in quite awhile. The loop is 4.5 miles and we both wanted 5 miles so we started adding cul-de-sacs and little byways onto the run. We chatted away and enjoyed the homes and their landscaping as we passed. It felt easy and good. In the end we ran 5.6 miles and ended just as the clouds were turning pink. It was beautiful - a perfect, evening run.

Rain's Back :-(

Woke up to the Pacific Northwest trio: grey, rain, cold. Yuck! It's really hard to get out of bed on days like today. I had insomnia for several hours last night so it was even harder than usual. I motivated myself with some coffee and got busy cleaning and such. My running partner called and we both agreed to reschedule our late morning run for mid-afternoon. Maybe the sun would pop out again.

Well, 3:30 rolled around and it looked the same as yesterday when we started - rain, grey, gloom - but today wind with some fairly impressive gusts was added to the mix. We started out on our 5-mile hill run none-the-less. We reached the halfway turnaround in very good time - evidently both of us just wanted to get it done. On the way down the second hill, the rain turned hard - it hurt. We both put our long-sleeved shirts back on. The wind picked up even more and the increasingly large balls of ice were being hurled at us. Great. We just put our heads down and ran for the next half mile until it turned back into benign rain. Another mile and we were home. Glad we went. Glad it's over. Hope it's better weather tomorrow.

Sunshine!

I woke up this morning and felt sad. Negative thoughts flowed through my mind. Not good. I hadn't run in two days - too busy with my son's high school graduation stuff. Not sure I'd be able to run today either. Our plan today was to get the boat out of storage and get it cleaned up and ready to put in the water for the season. Usually this is a big day for me - the start of waterski season. Usually this day is sometime in mid-April though. Not this year. We've had an extremely wet and cold spring. Even the locals are complaining. Anyway, it was another grey, cold morning here and getting the boat out seemed like an exercise in futility. We ate breakfast and then headed to the storage area. A quick hook-up and short drive and it was on the driveway and ready to be cleaned. We bought a new cover last year and now I know why I'm such a fan of Sunbrella fabric - the interior of the boat looked almost as good as when we parked it for the winter. I was able to quickly clean the front interior while my husband worked on the exterior. I went inside for some supplies and my running partner called wondering about the 6 miles we had talked about yesterday. Yes, I was was ready to go. I was still feeling gloomy and the cleaning was going fast so maybe a run would make me feel a bit better without setting back the boat-cleaning timeline too far. Even if we put the boat in the water, I wasn't going to ski anyway - it was too cold even for me! So we ran. Grey, gloomy, cold. After a mile, some blue was spotted in the sky. Another mile, more blue. Mile 3 I took off my long-sleeved shirt. Mile 4 the sun popped out. Mile 5 - a bit warmer. Mile 6 - my running partner is slowing down because of the 'heat'. Wow!! Finished in sunshine! Felt like spring! Yippee!! Who knows - maybe I'll take a first-day ski after all!! I think I found my sunshine!!