It feels great to be run­ning again. It's only been 2 days, but it feels sus­tain­able this time. I spent sev­eral hours try­ing on shoes Sun­day to find some that fit cor­rectly. I rushed into buy­ing my last few pairs of shoes that were sup­posed to be run­ning shoes but ended up not fit­ting well enough. The new ones are much bet­ter. Also I changed routes. Pre­vi­ously I had run toward Wakarusa and then toward 15th St or turned back, and it was awful. That first mile up to 23rd and Wakarusa is uphill the whole way and it destroys any desire to con­tinue. In fact it burns off all my energy leav­ing me exhausted, winded, and in a bad mood. Reach­ing the top doesn't feel like tri­umph, it feels like defeat to be beaten after just 1 mile.

My new route is a square from my house south a cou­ple blocks, west to the ele­men­tary school, north to 23rd, and east to my house. I haven't mea­sured the length yet, but I think it's 1.5 miles at least. It has 2 mild uphill parts and a nice inter­val feel to it. The fact that it is cooler out now then it was in August helps. Now it's down to the 50s after sun­set which is a lot more com­fort­able than 90.

So two days in a row of run­ning that was enjoy­able. And then again tonight, because it feels so good. It feels almost like that mag­i­cal sum­mer in Rolla. Lots of free time, long runs every night half for exer­cise and half from bore­dom, and extreme lone­li­ness. It's all there!