Tableau

There will be one thing I will remember about this morning's run through the hills.

It's an image of the older gentleman at the bottom of his driveway smiling and waving to me after he picked up his newspaper while two white-tailed deer ran through his front yard unbeknownst to him.

I'm not in Chicago any more.

Last night was a good example of going out, having fun, and still getting to bed on time. These three nights that I've had off of my show this week have proven to be quite restful and rejuvenating, despite the fact that I managed to schedule something on two of them. Monday night I had a couple auditions, and last night, I went to an advance screening of Franklin and Bash downtown, which was followed by a Q&A session with Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer. The show itself was okay, or at least it was better than the promos made it look, but that's not saying much. After the screening, though, the two stars were hilarious together, which I guess gives a little more hope to the future of the series. I probably still won't watch it, but it's good to know what's going on.

The point of all this is that even though I went out, I was home early and still in bed by 11:00. which should have made getting up today easy. Unfortunately, I was plagued with a dream last night that involved me delivering a package to some location that was across a river from New York, across a bridge from Canada, and still in sight of Orlando. When they wouldn't let me stop in to Canada really quickly, I got frustrated and started fighting zombies instead. It was odd, and left me strangely exhausted.

So, it was with a bit of effort that I still managed to get up on time today and head out on the road. My knees hurt a little bit in the first half mile or so, and my legs were a little stiff, but I was sure that this was a result of having four days in a row of running for a total of over 30 miles. This was a course I'd run several times before, so I knew that I'd have a little bit of time before I started hitting the bad hills. I let myself stretch out my stride a bit and the heaviness in my legs went away.

Just before I hit the hard uphill, I heard rustling, turned to my right, and saw two deer jumping through several front yards. This was already more fun than I normally have on a morning run, but it wasn't done yet. They ran along with me for about a block and then ahead into some woods. I turned up the hill and heard a lot of rustling on one side. I kept an eye behind me to make sure that I wasn't about to get charged, and by the time I stopped hearing things, I'd crested the hill, without even noticing it.

In fact, I barely noticed any of my hills today, a far cry from the last time I did a hill run. At one point, I remembered a spot of walking from last time about two blocks after I'd run past it. Of course it helped that I wasn't in direct sunlight this time and it was probably 10 degrees cooler, but a part of it had to be that my legs are getting stronger all the time. And if this little victory wasn't enough, that's when I came across my new friend outside of his house, and the deer were still there, twenty minutes later, enjoying his yard.

I know that I'm minutes away from a capital city and all, but it's nice, every now and then, to feel like I'm running in some hidden backroads. One of these days, I'll get the courage to run out to (or back from) Lake Travis, but in the meantime, I'll take what I can get from the other side of Bee Caves Road.

I mean, they've got deer.

Wednesday's Run:
77 Degrees / Clear
5.39 Miles
39 Minutes, 44 Seconds