Running, running and more running

Not to do with running at all, but I write this on election morning. It's about 11am and the result is still way too close to call. Last night I thought there was no way Biden could make up the ground needed to the necessary 270 electoral college votes, but it seems there's a slim possibility he might. The mail-in ballots and other non-traditional votes are new innovations in most states this election, which seems to have complicated the counting process, and it's possible we may not have final results today even.

This was the sunset last night. I'm pretty bad at remembering to take photos, except of the sun over the hills, so I'm sorry, there will probably be a lot of those. We had our time change this weekend so now it's very bright very early and very dark similarly early. Not every state uses the system, and a lot of people seem to think it's a nonsense.

It was Halloween a few days ago. We were banned from doing much of anything by Coach, who is fighting as hard as he can to keep our team covid free for the sake of our season. I did take a few photos of different decorations though, and these were my favourite. Painting, rather than carving pumpkins seems to be the fashion around here, and how cute are these guys. Alarmingly, one of the houses near here has what look like nooses hanging from a tree. I'm sure there's a sensible explanation but they're pretty creepy looking.

Covid continues to make a nuisance of itself. Last week the team's race got cancelled short notice for covid reasons, which was deeply frustrating. We did an intrasquad dual meet instead; Orange and Black teams for the men and the ladies with a combined point score. It was arranged so the teams should be as equal as possible, and in the end my Black lot just about edged it. We had some fantastic times. I ran 16.06 for the 5k, Avery ran 17.10 (a significant lifetime best) and we had seven women run under 19 minutes, which was pretty amazing given that it was just us legging it down a local path.

There's me closing in on the finish. We run on this path a lot, and it's almost identical to the Wirral Way. The Americans call them 'rails to trails'; old train lines turned into crushed gravel paths. This one goes for about 10 miles, and then connects with some other parks and paths. One day I'll explore the whole thing.

So yesterday I did something pretty awesome. This beautiful track belongs to the local high school (how?!) so that was cool enough but it gets better. My coach here also has a professional running group, including Hannah Segrave, who does 2.00 for the 800 and Abbey Cooper, who's run 15.03 for the 5000 and represented the US at the Rio Olympics. Pretty serious company for me to try and keep up with for about a million 400s. It's probably fair to say it was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I think that's what I need to get to the next level.