The thinest possible slice of moon was hanging in the western sky next to the brightly shimmering light of Venus. Both were shrouded in a foggy mist, and the black sky of night was glowing with globular halos around both…<\/p>\n
Wait. You don’t want to hear about this. This is the kind of wannabe-romantic mother-nature la-la served up so often here, so let’s talk about something else, shall we?<\/em><\/p>\n Rewind a week or so…<\/p>\n It was a Saturday morning. The weather was frighteningly warm for February. We were running in shorts and short-sleeved shirts. The water stops every two or three miles were important. It was an out-and-back route, and I was on my way back.<\/p>\n As I ran south on Jefferson heading back downtown enjoying the downhill slope, I heard some runners behind me — footfalls of three or four runners. They were talking to each other, and as they approached their voices got louder. (I have never quite understood this talking-while-running thing. I don’t enjoy it as much as I enjoy the soothing silence of being by myself. But… whatever.)<\/p>\n Their voices got louder, and I could now hear one of them complaining.<\/p>\n “The thing I hate,” he said, “is when you’re three miles from the finish line and someone on the curb shouts out, Good job! Good job!”<\/em><\/p>\n “I just hate that,” he said, “I just want to yell back at them, Shut up!”<\/em><\/p>\n And at that moment they passed me, the footfalls of their feet getting quieter as they quickly pulled away.<\/p>\n I waited for a moment. And then (having little self control in these things) I shouted out, Good job! Good job!<\/em><\/p>\n A couple of them laughed, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) there was no reaction from the guy.<\/p>\n As it turned out, we were less than a quarter mile from the last water stop. And when I got there, the four of them were still hanging around, drinking from paper cups and chatting with the guy who was taking care of the Gatorade. <\/p>\n I walked up and got some water, walking around the guy who had been complaining.<\/p>\n “So, I’m sorry about that Good Job!,” I said to all of them. “That was obnoxious.”<\/p>\n They all laughed out loud, including the complaining guy.<\/p>\n “No it wasn’t,” they said. “That was great.”<\/p>\n Score one for Mr. Loudmouth.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. A Moon\/Venus False Start The thinest possible slice of moon was hanging in the western sky next to the brightly shimmering light of Venus. Both were shrouded in a foggy mist, and the black sky of night was glowing with globular halos around both… Wait. You don’t want to hear about this. This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4570"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4574,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4570\/revisions\/4574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Good Job<\/h3>\n
3. At the Water Stop<\/h3>\n