Day 4,370—3 Runs until the Greater St. Louis Marathon—

 

     I saw a raccoon this morning right at the start of my run. He was in the Georgetown Apartment complex. He wasn’t aggressive and let me look at him long enough to take a picture. Normally, raccoons don’t stand still long enough for me to get a good picture like this, so I was surprised, but I was standing far enough away; maybe he just thought I was no longer a threat because he was behind a telephone pole. I thought about how much they look like cats, and the idea that animals that we grow up with, we don’t have as much respect for, compared to animals that we normally don’t see. When I visited Lombok, there were monkeys everywhere, and they seemed so interesting and crazy to me, but to the locals, they were just raccoons. Next, I saw some of the geese that live in the Walmart parking lot. I ran past them quickly and realized the geese were the same, and that both the raccoons and geese were no different from the monkeys or the small komodo dragons in Lombok.

     I looked at the route some more for the marathon this weekend, and I don’t know if it has changed compared to the last time, I looked at it, but I thought I liked the route, but now I see it has so many out-and-backs. There are some nice sections, but I miss the route we used to do ten years ago. Back in the day, we always hit the Delmar Loop and did no out-and-backs that I can remember. I wish I had all the other routes easily accessible so I could see them. I could find those runs on Garmin or Strava, but my annoyance with so little positive being added to this route will most likely not be satiated. It isn’t as bad as it has been in some years. At least we’re not running by the River for long stretches as we did in 2022. Still, it is the St. Louis marathon, and I have so many positive memories associated with it. I need to focus on just having fun.