The fat yellow moon and me

Today...well, today was kind of a long day. Having now recognized my Tuesday work day for what it typically is (a madhouse) I am committed to leaving at a reasonable time. It will be there tomorrow. And if there's a LOT that will be there tomorrow, I can just go in early.

All babbling about work aside, I did arrive home at a decent time. However, I remembered in the car ride that I'd forgotten to charge my iPod (dead as a post), and REALLY wanted to take it with me. (It's strange, but I've gotten very set in my running habits. I always do approximately the same Southie loop over the Causeway on either Monday or Tuesday with my iPod. I've grumpily gotten into the habit of the 5:30 a.m. run with some other DFMC'ers, sans iPod. Long runs remain iPod-free.) Either way, this particular run is a music-filled run, and that's the way I like it. So I plugged it in, reloaded with some new goodies (Audioslave, Scott Stapp, a little Ben Harper), and with that newly juiced electronic goodness headed into the elements. (It was, in fact, a wet and cool night.)

Normal loop + a little modification. I found myself on the causeway, looking up at the fat yellow moon, a perfect full moon the color of duck down or light margarine, listening to the water like I always do. Though I tend to adore the orangey Harvest Moon for its heavy closeness (it always looks so big and so low that I almost wait for it to fall out of the sky and bounce like a basketball), this was some moon. So bright that the water under it and around me came alive. I was so entranced by this whole delicious scene, I randomly turned around at the end of the Causeway and ran back around the loop again--this time with my face up and looking to the moon.

By the end of my run, I'd banged out a relatively aggressive 8.94 (we'll round to a friendly 9)--I'm not quite sure how that happened. Here is my route, which will appear confusing, as a few places got hit twice: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1571287

Two more runs this week before Derry--Thurs. morning and a quickie on Friday, I think. Then it's a lazybones Saturday for this cat, and run my face off Sun, follow it up with a little bit o' hoops...though the latter I may be watching.

But today--the moon. Gorgeous. In fact, it's a gorgeous, gorgeous world.

I'll leave you with the second of my two favorite quotes on running (or at least applicable to running) and life as a whole, one of the ones that I think of when I am so exhausted in body, spirit, and soul that it takes nearly all of what's left to repeat this mantra inside my own head--and as Kate knows, to sometimes randomly shout it at fellow runners (love you Kate, for sticking with bizarro me anyway):

The human spirit is indomitable. --Sir Roger Bannister