Race weekend

Not for me! It is for thousands and thousands of other people in Minnesota, though, because it's Twin Cities Marathon weekend! My days will be full because I volunteer with one of the race committees. Today I took a vacation day and squeezed in my weekend long run before kicking off marathon weekend festivities in the afternoon.

I looped around the river road through downtown Minneapolis. It was the coldest run I've done in many months: 37 degrees at the start - but more importantly, so windy. It turned out that I had inadvertently scheduled myself to run the entire first half basically into the wind, followed by the second half with the wind at my back. This was totally a coincidence, but it helped me finish the run feeling jolly instead of miserably cold. I definitely (and I'll say it again: definitely) could have used a pair of gloves during the first half.

It was so pretty out there. I'm feeling like a little bit of a broken record here, but it really was. The sun was brilliant, the clouds were puffy and the blue sky was so vibrant. It was been so gusty here over the past couple of days, but a lot of the leaves are hanging on, too.

First, I took a peek at downtown Minneapolis from under the Hennepin Avenue bridge:

This is what the bridge actually looks like:

Of course, I took a minute to look at leaves:

And I got over to the Lake Street bridge, and the sun was so bright, it ended up looking in photos like how kids draw suns:

The river (and trees along the river) looked beautiful.

That's the report, Reader. Next weekend's run is 12 miles, and the weekend after that is my own race weekend! This weekend, I'm just excited to cheer on friends and family, in one of my favorite races in the world.