Today I was pleasently surprized to learn my little run around the Temple is almost 4.5 miles-- so I can wring 5-6 miles out of that street without having to do too much doubling up. There are lots of runners and walkers out early. So I feel good about upcoming winter running. There's a girl at the end of the block who did Boston (so they tell me). I'm going to meet her and see if she wants to run with me sometimes. I had a hard time last year approaching November. It was the winter of Marsha and the headlamps, and our adventures on the BYU indoor track. I hated every minute; except that one time I almost stepped on a dead skunk in the middle of the road in the dark. That was exciting to spontaneously swear all the very worst swear words in front of the singlemost churchy person I know. Good times. But after running in the dark like that (and later on the track in the deep part of winter), I realized when you can't see anything it makes no difference where you run. So now that I'll be in the dark, I won't miss my trail so much and I can be glad there are street lights and other runners down a really long, straight wonderful street I can feel safe about running on in the middle of the night or early morning. That said, it has been so nice to run with Cath these mornings. I'm going to miss her when she goes back to Knoxville again. Beause we only ran on Saturdays all these years, running consecutive days will have to tide me over (6 days of consecutive running would equal 6 -8 weeks of our regular running). I will miss hearing about the messy divorce cases she's working on; the name calling, fighting about money and custody battles, and the children with attachement disorders. I will miss hearing all the ways her family is crazy and wonderful. I live vicariously through other people's family stories now I don't have any parents or grandparents anymore. I'll miss that. | 