As I woke up on Sunday, I could see light, but I could also see that the sun hadn’t actually breached the mountains yet. So I stayed in bed for a few more minutes.

Not wanting to annoy my sweetheart with the snooze on my alarm, I got up. I looked outside… still no sun over the mountains. Darn! If it doesn’t peak over the top, my run would be very chilly… but since I was doing 8 miles, I knew the sun would come up at some point.

I slowly put on shorts, sports bra, shirt, filled my water bottle, put my Nike+ and gel in the pouch on the bottle. Put gloves next to the water bottle. I got clothes out of the dryer so I could have the socks I wanted. How else could I procrastinate? I checked the temperature… 4 times.

Finally I thought the sun was coming. At just about 8 o’clock, I headed out into the most perfect temperature. I waved to the neighbor who was putting up some sort of brick structure in his yard.

There were cats, dogs, horses, cows, llamas… nothing unusual. About 3/4 of a mile in, the sun came over the mountains, and kissed my chilled skin. It stayed at the perfect sun-kissed chilly temperature through the run.

At four miles, I took my gloves off. At six miles, I had a gel (this was my first time trying Honey Stingers – yum!) just like normal. And the last two miles? Not hard. I wasn’t tired, my legs weren’t starting to say ‘hey, this is long’. I just ran, and it was completely normal. I ran at exactly the pace I should have for a long run – I didn’t have to work at it at all. It just happened.

It’s amazing how a normal run with no extraordinary moments can be a completely extraordinary run.