Today's Run

I was hoping to have a "pretty picture" to show you of my run route, etc. today, and I even went to the trouble of taking my GPS and strapping on my heart rate monitor (HRM) chest strap, but I literally was one step out the front door of our building when the batteries in the GPS died.  Darn it.  I knew that if I went back upstairs to swap out my now non-functional GPS with my regular watch (with a simple stopwatch feature that I have been using to time my runs lately) that I just might not make it back out the door, so I just went without a way to record my time.  I feel really weird when I do this - I like to at least know how much time I run for.  But today, nada in terms of information or statistics on the run.  I estimate it was about half an hour.  It was the first time I have gone out to run in the evening here (I generally always run in the morning), and while it was a good run - the weather wasn't too hot or anything, and I felt like I had put in a good effort by the time I called it quits - it confirmed for me the superiority of my customary AM runs.  Why?  The streets were simply packed with people!  I know a lot of it is from the Kaohsiung Lantern Festival going on through next weekend, and when I ran along the Love River where the festival is centered, there were simply throngs of people there.  That is to be expected, but there were also mobs of people out in Central Park and along pretty much all the streets.  News flash - this is a pretty big city! (pop. about 1.5 million in the city proper; metro area has ~3 million souls)  Sometimes I sort of forget that there are lots and lots of people here, but on days like today, I remember.

Hopefully next week I can get back to my regular AM run schedule.  Tomorrow AM I am going to try to watch the runners in the Kaohsiung International Marathon, though!  I bet I will be able to see them right out the window as I drink my coffee! (If so, expect to see some pics here in the future.)  I mistakenly wrote in a recent post that the marathon was Saturday morning - it's actually Sunday.

GJS