Wearing Hats Keeps Me Cool

For these three runs, I wore my UT hat to keep myself cool. We've been having some really warm weather in the PNW lately, and I needed to protect the sunburn I got going to JW's gig last Saturday, lest it get any worse. It's not a bad sunburn by any means, but it's right on the back of my neck, so an easy target especially while running.

During this run, a biker came up behind me on the trail and slowed to my pace, and I took out my headphones because I saw he was clearly making some comment to me - and he was asking, "Did you go to UT?" and I smiled and said I did, and he asked when I graduated - and I laughed because this guy was clearly my parent's age, if not older, and I told him I graduated in 2011 - and he told me he graduated in 1978, and got his master's in 1989, and his sister and niece and someone else also went to UT - and here I am jogging along trying to keep my pace, listening to this guy go on and on about his family... and though I do appreciate the random act of kindness, I was kind of like, how is this conversation going to end?? But he was perfectly nice and said it was nice to meet me, and I laboriously said "Nice to meet a fellow Longhorn!" but he was gone by the time I got to "Longhorn", so anyways. That was the longest run-on sentence ever, but okay.

This run was clearly on a very beautiful day - I tried to enjoy every minute of it - but I got started later than I wanted to (it was Saturday! so hard to get out of bed...) and basically broke up the run into 3 segments of 4 miles. At the end of each segment, I stopped for about 5 minutes to wrap my mind around the next segment.

I was on my last segment, and someone biked passed me with his head turned towards me, clearly saying something - and I only caught the last of his comment, but it was something along the lines of  "Nice hat!", so that was kind of cool. I always get a little jolt of adrenaline when a stranger on the trail encourages me or gives me a thumbs up or compliments what I'm wearing... so that's always nice.

92 degrees... my own fault. I wanted to get up early, but apparently if there's nobody else getting up with me, I have no motivation. So, I chose sleep and ran this after I got my new car title transferred to my name, in Issaquah. I ran this while listening to Harry Potter and without any of the voice feedback on each mile, only at the halfway point so I knew when to turn around.

The trail was pretty empty (re: 92 degrees), but there was this one guy who was running towards me in the other direction, who seemed to be struggling - and I wasn't doing that great either - but in the moments before we passed each other, he gave me a thumbs up, and I gave one back. I love those moments!! It really does make it so much better for me to have people, or even just one person, cheering me on.

So, I guess wearing a hat makes me cool. :P