The first step down the stairs in the morning is usually a good indication of my lingering injury status. Most of the summer I've had to brace myself for some sharp pain in my left knee, hip flexors or right ankle. Often, the pain or soreness is gone by the time I reach the bottom, but this morning and most of last week, I've felt nothing. I'll take that as a good sign. What doesn't seem like such a good sign is that my weight was up a little over a pound from last week (after a 60 mile week and really watching what I eat!). Oh well, I had a good run this morning. I was kind of waiting to see if there was any lingering fatigue from Saturday's long run before deciding whether to push it or not. I thought I'd wait until the four mile mark before I made that decision. As I was approaching the turn on to the Alpine Highway, a young woman passed ahead of me going north at what looked like a pretty good pace. As I rounded the corner heading north, I realized after a minute or two that she wasn't gaining on me, so without giving it another thought I started to pick up the pace. I could have surged a bit an caught up to her rather quickly, but I didn't want to try to keep that up the rest of the way to Kohler's. As I closed in to about ten feet, a dog suddenly started barking nearby and it freaked her out a bit and she turned around and saw me. When it's so dark, you naturally wonder about strangers so I just said good morning in a friendly voice and passed her. It would have been nice to have somebody to talk to inasmuch as we were going roughly the same pace and going in the same direction, but it wasn't going to work with a young woman. I thought about the reports that I'd read recently about some guy up in Bountiful that's been targeting early morning joggers. I didn't want this young woman to have any reason to doubt my reasons for being out at that time of the morning. After passing her I continued to pick up the pace and finished strong. Saw lots of people out this morning including Lloyd N., Jill W and the bishop and his wife.
One thing I forgot to note on my blog entry for Saturday was our encounter with a group of hunters in the foot hills above Cedar Hills and Pleasant Grove. We had run into a couple of guys earlier that were in hunting vest and looked like they were scouting things out and it may have been the same two that we saw about a half an hour later on another trail. They were outside their truck at that point with their shotguns. We headed off on another trail and as we rounded a corner we saw two more pickup trucks with hunting decals in the rear windows. We didn't think too much about it until we heard a shot off in the distance, followed by another shot less than fifty yards away. The fact that we couldn't see who was shooting or what they were shooting at made us think that maybe we ought to turn around. We didn't hear or see anything else as we headed back down the mountain, but we were wondering what they might have been hunting and whether it was even legal in that area (many of the trails are fairly popular with hikers, runners and mountain bikers). That's something I need to remember to check on. | 