It's too early for fall!

This morning dawned with a bit of chill in the air. Not enough to frost the pumpkin, but I felt it when riding in to work this morning.

I'm very fortunate to live in an area where I get a fantastic sunrise view of Mt. Rainier both on my commute, and from the balcony where I enter my work building. The silhouette of the mountain from the rising sun is beautiful. And as sunrise gets later, that silhouette gets less and less detail on the dark side as I make my way into work.

It's only mid-August! This year has been strange in that we've only had maybe two days above 79 degrees. It's like summer never got here, and it's already giving clues that it's almost over.

But one thing fall has always made me think of (besides back-to-school, how much I didn't practice my trumpet over the summer, etc) is cross country running. I've been doing a good percentage of my running off-road, which I love, but most of that has been fire road type stuff. Not "real" cross country stuff. I find myself daydreaming about running on the wilderness trails. Maybe it's all the ultra-runner blogs I've been reading...

I'm still toying with the idea of the off-road half marathon. Not this year, as it would only be 2 months away, and I'm not going to try to push myself to get that kind of mileage progression. Next year...