Five Hundred Fifty-Nine

December 11, 2016
8.29 Miles in 1:19:24
Mood: Proud of my status as the Master of Timing.
Soundtrack: U2 "Songs of Innocence"

I felt a bit torn, as my wife wanted me to help out with passing out water to runners in the Jingle Bell 5K Run and I wanted to get in a good long run on this Sunday morning. A group she and my kiddos volunteer with had signed up to help out at the water station for that charity run in Wash Park. My solution was to get to the park early, run as hard as I could until I had gotten in a significant number of miles, and then help out. I timed in perfectly (completely by accident), as I finished up my eight miles and arrived at the water station about 30 seconds before the first runners started arriving. It was truly a serendipitous bit of timing, which I took credit for as if I had planned it the whole time.

Passing out water to runners in a race is actually a lot of fun, although it's a bit weird to do so 30 seconds after finishing a run that is more than twice as long as the race they are running. Plus, I was super sweaty, and as you can tell from photo above, it was cold...so I started getting a bit chilly. Still, I had fun both during my run and during theirs.

It was a cold morning, but the photos I took make it look MUCH chillier than it actually was. As long as the sun was shining, it was downright pleasant...although perhaps much of that is owed to becoming acclimated to the sub zero temps from earlier in the week which made a 30 degree day feel balmy.

One last thing, I listened to the most recent U2 album (from a few years ago) through twice on this run. The general music snob opinion is that the music game has passed Bono and company on by, but I think this is a really outstanding collection of songs. I think people are just used to the old classic U2 and don't want to invest in their newer works, which I guess is their loss.