Evening Running: Something Special Happened

I have several blog posts in the works, one of which I wanted to post tonight. But then something special happened on my run after work, and I feel it needs to be written about instead.

I left home and ran south on Connecticut, and I ran fast. As I approached Woodley Park, I noticed a large back-up of cars waiting to cross Calvert Street. Then I noticed large crowds of people standing on all four corners at the intersection. And people holding signs? Police cars? What is going on here? Literally within one second of my arriving at the corner and stopping among the crowd, a the motorcade approaches. One black SUV and then a long Cadillac with american flags sticking out of the front. The Cadillac turned left on Calvert Street and Obama's profile appeared through the tinted back window. Everyone cheered and clapped, and took pictures as the rest of the cars drove by. As the crowd dispersed, I followed their route and ran down Calvert, running faster wondering if I might catch up to them at a light. But I was sent on a detour and ran even more hills than I had intended on my short route. But no matter, I was just so pleased with what I had stumbled upon. And I was reminded, yet again, of how special it is to live here. I was newly energized and I ran uncharacteristically fast, averaging 8:55 minutes/mile. As I pushed myself hard, I contemplated my training plan for the half marathon. I finally have a pretty solid plan that I look forward to sharing with you this week, and I think I came up with the final touch on today's run.

When I got home, Josh and I did a spontaneous photo shoot, trying to come up with material for i love lucy's new header. Right now, I'm just gathering a bunch of images to play around with. I'm not thrilled with what we took tonight and may end up using random photos I already have. Either way, it is a project I look forward to. And I'm lucky to have a great photographer on hand when I want him. Here are a few of the photos from tonight, prior to their being edited and saved as raw images.

What do you think? Should I go with the jiggly leg picture? I think not. My goal is to have this done and up by the end of August, at the latest. Wish me luck!