Sunrise: 7:03am
Temperature: 20°F(-7°C)
Wind Chill: 6°F (-14°C)
Water temperature: 34 °F / 1 °C But it looked at least partially frozen, so I'm not sure that is right.
Route: The usual.
Running buddy: Matt.
Sky cover/ environmental observations: There is a particular place in our run where I always feel a sense of awwhh... and where I feel I'm taking it in. It's after we've been running on the path awhile. You see, first we head straight to the lake where we get our first glimpse of it. Often I feel here, "Yes!! There it is! There's the lake! This is awesome! I'm glad I'm running today!" Though sometimes it's more like, "damn! that wind off the lake is cold." Or, sometimes, regrettably, "ug, I hate warming up. I can't wait til we get to the stretch point." But after this initial glimpse, the land juts out into the lake and so we end up being more inland, without the lake in immediate view. As we keep going the path turns to the edge of the lake. And there's no beach there, just the cement wall, so we're really close. I think this is where they do the Foster Ave "beach" fire spinning & drumming on full moons in the summer. Perhaps it's no coincidence, because I feel that this is the stretch of the run, and the point immediately preceding that stretch when we're running up to it, that I most observe and appreciate the nature that is still present in this urban area.
There were clouds in the sky, but if you looked straight up you could see a bit of blue, which, I thought, had an interesting lighting effect with the fresh white snow on the ground. It's as if the light came in and was bouncing around inside the cloud cover and off the white ground. A very light, dry snow again dusted the path. When we were headed south, the lake definitely looked frozen. It had a steely blue color that blended with the steely blue of the clouds at the horizon line. On the return north, the sun was out. The lake reflected its bright golden light. It was spectacular and too bright to look at, really. And the light was falling through the clouds in the way that makes you think, that's what God would look like. If one were to believe in such a God. We stopped and observed the lake more closely. There were small areas of open water between ice sheets that displayed little ripples. The freezing of a lake as big as Lake Michigan displays much hesitation.
Near the end of our run we see trees that have a lot of berries of some kind on them. Today, they were surrounded by a flock of nibbling robins! This totally weirded me out as I was raised with the idea, "you know spring is here or is coming soon when you see your first robin." Today is only the first day of February. There shouldn't be any robins out! But Matt suggested that perhaps birds migrate not for temps but for food source, and that there would be plenty of warm places for them to hang out in the city. So, maybe it's not some side effect of global warming. Maybe it's a side effect of urbanization. Either way, it was disturbing for me to see a flock of robins.
We also saw a squirrel that was hard at work burying...something...in the snow. Either he's a workaholic or he was a slacker over the summer and is trying to meet some deadlines. I totally have fallen in love with squirrels since we've been running. I love how they pummel the ground with their little fists! I love workaholic squirrels!
Clothing: Ha. Okay, so Tuesday it was actually very very cold out. Survivable, of course, but it was cold. And I was expecting more of the same today. Luckily, I had checked the weather before I left, but I still had it in my head it was going to be colder than Tuesday, so I was a overdressed. shoes, socks (will I ever run without them?), army pants, wicker, thin t-shirt, VEST (this was the unnecessary addition), gortex, gator, hat, new running mittens. I would have been fine with the vest and wind breaker, or just the gortex, but I really didn't need both. If it had been 8 degrees though, this layering would have been delightful.
Matt graciously accepted (more graciously than I was expecting) the gator I presented to him. Now...just got to get him into a wind breaker! A paper thin t-shirt and old sweatshirt is just not enough! (I'm not sure where this "mothering" instinct came from...)
How did I feel? I had a different West African Dance teacher on Tuesday and she did different exercises that I'm not accustomed to. Which is the long way of saying that my gastrocnemius' have been a-whining since then. But, after a 10 minute massage yesterday and a slathering of ICY HOT (how would I have made it through Basic Training without that stuff...) they were feeling run-able today. I also really really need to start eating before these runs. My cells seriously run out of juice. But otherwise, life was swell. (Etymology of "swell," anyone?)
Lake Shore Drive: Didn't notice.Total people count on path: (walkers/runners/bikers/people+dogs) 11/5/7/4 = 27 The walkers have it today!
People spotted from the hill: The friendly man with walking sticks. I really like him.
Other runners: 5. The guy we saw last week who seemed startled when we had said hello was out, and we could tell he recognized us! That was cool. There also was a girl with really cool blue running pants and matching fun hat. (Eric, you would have liked her!)
Bike commuters: 7. Impressive, wouldn't you say?
Dog Beach: Deserted.
Destination: Home, briefly. Than the grocery store. How does a person (that would be me) run out of soy milk, cereal, bread, fruit, RICE, juice, soy yogurt, rice cakes, granola...
What do I like about running? I like eating after running. Oh, lovely Autumn Wheat cereal. AND Trader Joe's is now making an unsweetened soy milk. The world just got a little sweeter as I don't care for sweetness in my cereal, with the exception of strawberries, of course!
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