Running with the stars

Sunset from the road to Brush, June 9, 2007

...as in starry starry night - or pre-dawn.

It's been a long time since I've run in the dark. During The Run, my only run in the dark occurred on June 9th, the fourth day of the run and our first day with the motorhome. It turned out that those few last minute items consumed most of the morning so the final RV prep plus the drive out to the day's starting point meant I didn't begin running until almost 1 p.m. and didn't finish running until 9:15 p.m. Me in the dark without a reflector vest and the guys on bikes with one bike light between them. What a team! I was definitely bushed in Brush that night. (But what fun camping for the first time in the motorhome, in the Brush city park, and for free!)

Since then, all my running has been done in daylight - until this week. I now have a volunteer job that starts at 7:30 three mornings a week. I'm a much better person if I've had a run before I confront the public so I've been getting out the door around 5-5:30 for a bit of a run before breakfasting and volunteering.

It's dark at that time of the day - just like when I was running while I was working! What a wonderful time of day to run...stars, planets, little critters, not so little critters. When I ran with my old dog, Loki, I had an early warning device leashed to me. Loki loved everything and everybody. If his ears went up, I knew there was something interesting ahead; if his ears went back flat, I knew there was danger ahead. Very handy. Jester dog, on the other hand, is a bit more cautious. He scruffs his neck whenever he detects anything he believes to be out of the ordinary: a trash can, a loose piece of paper, a person, a critter, an invisible spooky thing. So now we have a wary dog attached to a neck-swiveling human wondering what the heck mister Jester is looking at. Be that as it may, we're both quite excited by the prospect of grabbing the leash in the morning just like old times. And I do love being out there in the pre-dawn quiet...almost as good as those long country roads this summer.