Start Time: 10/30/08, 6:20pm
Location: Arlington (Courthouse, Clarendon, Ballston)
Distance: 4 miles
Average Pace: 8:15min/mile
Total Miles For October: 77 miles

I have a love/hate relationship with late fall and winter running. With the daylight hours being so much less, it’s sometimes (ok, a lot of the times) hard for me to get up the gumption to go running. I’m not a big fan of running in the dark, and often with that dark comes frigid temperatures. Brrrr. But, after using excuses for no weekday runs last week, and then bagging out on Tuesday, it was time to get up and moving again. (I actually caught myself thinking, “Well, I did my hour at the gym on Monday, and on Wednesday in addition to spinning class I picked up an extra 20 minutes of rowing…” Yeesh!) Fortunately the temperature went up a bit so it was 50 degrees out instead of, oh, 30.

The thing is, once I actually get out there and moving? I usually have a good time. It helps that without the heat slowing me down, I pick up the pace pretty easily without even realizing I’ve done so. Just a nice, short, brisk run in the cool temperatures—although I have got to remember to not run eastbound on the Arlington Boulevard Trail at night, because all the car headlights are shining right into my eyes. (Fortunately there’s a small distance of space between the trail and the road itself, but it’s still annoying… and also hard to see the cracks and little jumps in the pavement as a result. I turned my ankle at one point as a result, hopefully it will be ok.) Hopefully now that the proverbial ice is broken, I’ll be a little better about my weekday runs!

(That said, this is why I never sign up for a spring marathon. And perhaps no more November marathons?)