Kerry's Running Blog

I don't think all of today's miles were easy miles, but I left the house a little later than usual and by the time I reached the corner where I usually start my run, the Garmin still wasn't locked into the satellites so I just turned it off and ran. I was really expecting that I'd be running in the rain and snow this morning, but temperatures were fairly mild and there was only a little wind from the south. No aches and pains to speak of. I recently realized that I may have a conflict with the 5K I signed up for this weekend. I believe that my daughter is scheduled to take the ACT that morning and my wife will be working so I'm not sure how that will all work out (we always plan out our week during FHE on Monday evenings so I should know by tomorrow). Anyway, just after I got home the storm hit with hail, rain and wind. Some days everything just works out for you.

When the noise from my daughter getting ready for school woke me up this morning I was in the middle of a running dream. I'd been walking along the street in front of Deerfield Elementary when I noticed some runners coming towards me with race bibs. I didn't know of any race going on then, but decided to join them anyway. I ran and chatted with them all the way to the finish and was just talking to them about the race when I woke up. I thought I recognized a few people from the blog there.

Well, this was another morning when the Garmin failed to lock in before I was ready to run. It must have a lot to do with the position of the satellites at that particular time of day, as when I run later in the morning on Saturday's it's locked in before I even get to the end of my driveway. Anyway, another pleasant day for a run. With yesterday's snow, rain and wind I was expecting conditions to be a little worse than they were. It was cold and humid (29 degrees and 81% RH), but I was dressed warm enough that I didn't really notice. What I did notice was how clear and fresh the air was. Running south after the turn by the high school I especially noticed how much the temple stood out this morning. It was just brilliant. I couldn't help thinking about President Uchtdorf's talk in the priesthood session when I noticed that I wasn't running directly towards the temple, but was a couple of degrees off. It was a good reminder of the need to know where you're going and to make the necessary course corrections often and early in one's journey.

Lunch run with Laureen on the Highland Glen loop. We have been asked to work from home on Wednesdays so this gives me a chance to run with my wife. I might have run earlier as well, but I had to get up early to work on a video project for my daughter. I kept getting errors when I'd try to burn it to the DVD. Kind of a pain, but I got it all figured out. It was a bit nippy at times. The temperature was 43, but the wind out of the north was around 15 mph, which dropped the wind chill to 28 degrees.

The regular Highland Glen loop, just trying to build my base back up. Starting out there was a stiff breeze (about 15 mph) coming out of the west north west that dropped the windchill into the upper teens. It was hard to imagine that they're predicting temperatures near 80 for Monday. With it being so cold and windy I was amazed to see that one of the neighbors had their sprinklers going. Not only was most of the water blowing into the street, it was so unnecessary with the recent moisture. The house isn't currently occupied, but someone's got the idea that the reason the lawn is yellow while many of the neighbor's are deep green is that their lawn isn't getting enough water (when the real reason is that it just needs some fertilizer).

Outside of the initial cold, it was a fairly routine run. It's now so light at 6:00 am that with the scattered clouds only Jupiter was visible in the southwest. I couldn't make out any of the surrounding stars in Sagittarius. I guess I'm going to have to start getting up a little earlier.

I keep hearing rumors that warmer weather is coming, but I haven't seen much evidence of it yet. I missed last night's weather report, but before going to bed I could hear the wind and ice pelting our bedroom window. I wasn't sure what to expect as I stepped outside this morning, but was happy that it was a little warmer with very little wind. It was, however, snowing lightly. Ran the usual Highland Glen loop. Once I've established a base over the next two weeks then I'll start to build on that by upping the mileage and hopefully starting to do some doubles and one or two tempo runs per week. The WBR is not that far away. I also need to put in our registration for St. George.

I  was really hoping to get a long run in today, but we stayed up late last night and I woke up just in time to take my daughter to her ACT exam. Since this was a catch up day on chores, we were still going until well after dark, but I did manage to get a fairly leisurely bike ride in with my daughters. It was just a beautiful day, we got a lot done and finished the day with a wiener roast under the stars with our next-door neighbors.