A Hint of Fall

Taken last night on my way home

I’m starting to remember that there is such a thing as autumn, and that it is real. This is aided in large part by the storms that have been popping up lately, dousing us with rain and leaving ever-so-slightly cooler temperatures in their wake.  According to the weather station on top of my building, today’s storm brought things down (at least momentarily) to 75 degrees. 75 degrees! Has it even gotten that cool at NIGHT recently? I’m not sure.  Either way, it is very very welcome.

Taken on my way back from lunch with Jose today

The hint of fall in the air has made running a bit easier lately.  I successfully completed my self-assigned three weeks of morning running last week.  The grand total was three mornings the first week, 2 the second week, and 2 the third week — plus at least one morning per weekend.  There were also a few days of biking thrown in for good measure.  This week my schedule made it difficult to get out there early so I reverted to a couple evening workouts.  But overall, I liked the morning run experience enough that I plan to continue it for a while.  I may have to reassess as sunrise gets later and later, but we’ll see.

I signed up yesterday for the RunGirl Half Marathon on December 12.  There are 3 new half marathons in the area between late November and Christmas, and as much as I’d love to do them all, it’s probably unrealistic so I had to prioritize.  RunGirl was my top choice because the course is in a pretty area and because I thought it’d be neat to do a women-only running event.  I’m still toying with the idea of doing the Seawall Half Marathon in Galveston on November 20, but don’t want to make the final decision yet.  And of course there is Houston on January 30!

Last weekend I met a couple people from my tri club over in Seabrook and we ran 7 miles on the trails there.  Our pace was pretty slow, but it was nice to have company and it made the run seem much shorter.  Tomorrow I’ve got 8 miles on the schedule, but I also wanted to run the Toughest 10K in Houston (which involves two laps — or 4 trips up and 4 trips down — the Kemah Bridge).  The race starts at 8:00, so we’re meeting at 7:20 to run 2 miles ahead of the race itself so we can have 8.2 miles for the day.  I’m not going to worry about pace for the 10K at ALL because I know it will be sloooooow.  I’ve only run the bridge once, ever, and it was about 5 years ago so let’s just say I don’t exactly have a lot of hill training under my belt!

I also committed to running the Texas Independence Relay in March with a team from my tri club.  Madness…