Running at sunrise...

The joys of early morning runs...

I'd arranged to meet Bronwyn at 5:30am at Lake Harriet so I was out the door at 5:15am - after 4.5 hrs of sleep with the concert last night - I'm not sure I would have dragged my ass out of bed had I not made arrangements to meet but I am very glad I did. It was a glorious morning for running. About 50F - perfect for shorts and longsleeves. I had my hand-held water bottle as I wanted to go for about 10 miles or so. We looped around Harriet and over to Calhoun and then peeled off onto 36th and down along Kings Highway, over to Minnehaha parkway for a bit and back to Harriet - it was a nice route, different from just circling the lakes. After Brownyn turned off at Sheridan I ran back over to Calhoun and did a few extra miles to get just over 12 in total (12.4mi, HR 149). I kept the pace pretty consistent around 8:20s and it felt really good. I think I need to start doing more of these longish mid-week runs as I probably can't fit in more than 3 runs a week but need to be keeping my mileage up at the same time.

I was home by 7am which a few years ago is probably the earliest hour I would ever have thought of setting my alarm for. Spent a bit of time stretching and using "the stick" on my hamstrings and quads, while watching the morning news and then off to work... via s'bucks of course - where my friendly barista had my triple venti nf latte ready before I even paid for it :)

A great way to start any day. And I ended it with a run also - the TC1mile event was downtown this evening so myself and Pam met at Loring Park and sauntered through downtown for probably the slowest mile we'll run this year (well, at least on the road - I have a feeling some of the miles next weekend will take twice as long...). It was a great atmosphere around town. Normally I would stay around to watch the elites but I had some work to do last night so we just jogged easy for a few miles along Kenwood Parkway so Pam could stretch her legs before her big adventure this Saturday - Ice Age 50M!

Good Luck to everyone running out there this weekend!!

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The Swell Season

Excellent concert last night. Glen & Marketa really lived up to expectations with this gig. And Damien Dempsey supporting was a nice bonus. Glen went a little overboard with some of the story telling but he was pretty entertaining and given that they stayed on stage until 11:30pm he didn't take away from the music time with his winding tales about the head and the heart, not to mention "those people who cannot be seen"...!

I loved his performances of the The Frames songs. He can sing me to sleep any night with "I will write you letters...". And their performance of Falling Slowly was incredible. There's a song that rightly deserves the limelight as much as sometimes might want to sometimes "take it back".

Check out the music and interviews on NPR where you can even download a podcast of one of their concerts!!

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