Another Running Story

I feel like all of my blogs of late feature a run, but there are a number of reasons for that:

• Most of my days consist of working, eating, sleeping, and running, and running is the most interesting activity of those four.
• I have never shown this much fitness initiative in my life and I'm proud of myself.
• It's a chance to brag again about how wonderful my surroundings are.
• I always see the coolest stuff while out on a run. There's logic behind this, too: seeing cool things implies that I'm outside (otherwise I just see walls), and being outside implies that I'm running (well, unless it's the 3-minute walk to work, but that is negligible); therefore, seeing cool stuff implies that I'm on a run. Technically the inverse is not necessarily true, but so far it's holding as well!

Anyway.... I was super motivated last night, so I went to bed promptly at 9:30. Why, you may ask? That meant that I could wake up and get into work an hour early, then leave at 4 and go for a quick run before the sun set. At first I didn't want to-- it was so cold! But I'd already put in the effort of getting up early, so I headed out. And I am so glad I did.

First up, the usual family of kangaroos. There are about 20 of them that usually hang out in the same spot at the beginning of my route, and they've gotten so used to having me run past that this time they didn't even bother to get out of the path. One of them was just sprawled out on the ground, watching me. I swear, it'll never get old.

As I wove my way through the crowd, I was suddenly concerned because one of the females had what looked like a large branch sticking out of her pouch. As I got nearer though, the sound of my footsteps alerted the joey to pull his hind leg back in and poke his head out instead. Clearly a Jeremy. (On my way back, it was his tail that was hanging out.)

Well, I won't lie-- it was a tough run. I wasn't prepared to do the whole loop, and didn't think I could make it before dark anyway, but the plan was to run out 15 minutes and back 15 minutes, walking whatever was left due to my slower return pace. After the first 20 I was so tired (don't judge, these are lots of hills and an out-of-shape girl we're talking about) that I had to take a break, feeling very sorry for myself.

No sooner had I walked about 20 yards than I looked up and-- wombat. Right in front of me. Snuffling along the path. Of course, I knew what it was right away, but I couldn't believe my eyes! Even people who've lived up here for years have only seen them a couple of times, as they're pretty elusive creatures. And yet, here it was, walking not five yards in front of me!

I walked along with it for maybe thirty seconds, and then it occurred to me that I should at least try to take a picture with my crappy phone camera. As I struggled to pull it open on my insufferably slow phone (but only when I want to take photos), the wombat looked back at me and with surprising agility bounded off into the underbrush, never to be seen again. In a way I'm kind of glad-- there's no way any photo would have done the moment justice. It felt as magical as if I'd just seen a unicorn, and I was so excited that suddenly I had plenty of energy to sprint all the way back.

Last note: I stopped to greet the kangaroos on my way back, and saw one that had for some unknown reason clambered to the top of a huge dirt pile. Only issue is that it had rained all night, and the mound was rather muddy and steep. Long story short, I got to watch a kangaroo slide down a hill on his rear end.

And this is why I run.