Danger!

I've finished another week of early morning running. When I began this routine, I thought the most dangerous thing would be cars getting too close to me while drivers shook the sleep out of their eyes and failed to notice the weirdo in the reflective vest. Unfortunately, this week showed me that drivers are not the only thing threatening the safety of my morning running.

Today I did have a driver turn onto the street I was running on and come dangerously close to hitting me. He clearly did not see me--it probably would've improved his vision if he'd scraped the ice off his windshield before pulling away in his death machine. I was alert enough to move way over and avoid his car, but if I hadn't been watching, I'm pretty sure he would have hit me.

Yesterday, however, I wasn't able to avoid an unfortunate incident. I set out on an 8 mile morning run, and a little over 1/2 a mile into it I turned onto a sidewalk into a park. I noticed right away that there was a big patch of ice on this little downslope, so I decided to run it very careful. But really--how careful can you be running downhill on ice? I slipped once, recovered, then BAM! I fell over sideways cutting open my knee and elbow and banging my head on the ice. I heard a sound like glass shattering and though, crap, I broke my headlamp. Fortunately my headlamp was fine--I had just shattered a thin patch of ice with my skull.

I got up a little gimpy, but felt fine after a minute or two. After finishing my 8 miles, I went to pull my apartment key out--whoops, no key. So, I turned my 8 mile run into a 9 mile run after I ran back and miraculously found my key. It was right in the middle of the patch of ice.

Despite dealing with all that nonsense yesterday, I still put 7 miles in this morning, and the thought of running on a treadmill didn't even come into my mind. I love running outside!