Wind at my back

Arriving at the finish line of today's long run

The wind blew all last night and into the morning - thus prompting a route change for today's run. I had thought I'd be running today's 20-miler north and east from Boulder to Longmont. What with the wind blowing big from the north and west - and the being fed up with running into the wind - I plotted a new course that would take me a scant mile northeast then 19 miles due east, i.e., with the wind at my back. Ahhhh....

A new map, that showed a straight line east along Baseline Road, was handed to Kendall with instructions to meet me in 4 hours or slightly less at County Road 19. (Baseline, by the way, was so-named because it runs along the 40th parallel which also was the line of demarcation between the Nebraska and Kansas territories in 1854.)

Now back to the run and the high- and low-lights:

• the wind was at my back!
• the route involved all roads, and increasing traffic on the east-most miles where I had expected less traffic
• some small town life and lots of farmland
• the wind was at my back and I was running in shorts!
• there is a lot of uphill involved in getting out of Boulder country (word of the day: "undulating")
• despite mapping out a one-road run (after leaving my neighborhood) I managed to get onto a different road 16 miles into the run. Fortunately, Kendall had just seen me, had pulled to the side of the road to take some pics, and noticed that I veered right at the "Y" rather than left (since left said 168th rather than Baseline and right said nothing and most all traffic went right). All that crewing experience from the run to Michigan paid off big time today. The route deviation put me on a road parallel to Baseline (I didn't even know I was off Baseline until after the run), and gave me a bonus .5 miles.
  
• the wind was at my back and I was running in shorts AND I was clocking a steady diet of 11 minute miles!

All in all, a solid 20.5-miler to put into the log which, coincidentally, gave me an even 200 miles for the year.