Halloween Running

How much time I've been letting go between posts - it's a wonder that I even blog at all.

Last night I met up at the Oakhurst Running Club for the usual Wednesday night run. But it being Halloween, it turned out not to be such a usual run afterall. One of the runners wore a dress and I regretted that more of us didn't think to do something Halloweenie-ish.

We started running the neighborhood route at the same time that the tricker-treaters were just setting out to collect their candy-loot. There were a LOT of tricker-treaters on some of the streets. There must have been a few organized efforts with some car-pooling involved. There were a few crowds of 20-30 kids with chaperones and traffic control. As we ran by, we received plenty of calls from the candy-givers at their doorsteps which varied between "Do you want some candy?" or "No costumes, no candy!" The kids and parents also noticed our pack as we sometimes had to dodge between them on the street. The comments from the kids "Are they running?", and the parents "What a great idea!" (as if we don't do this every Wednesday.) A lot of people just stared at us, and to those I called out a "Happy Halloween!" as we passed.

The general festivity in the air and the attention we got as we ran along our route made it feel like we had signed up for some kind of nighttime race, complete with crowd support but minus the water stops. And I haven't felt such a part of Halloween in a long time.

Either all the hiking I did on vacation strengthened my legs or the Halloween spirit got into me as this turned out to be one of my better runs with this group. The hills were tough, but just a little less-so. My finishing time for the 5.22 mile route was 44 minutes - that's (for me) an amazing 8.25 minute pace!!