Things Seen

It's been a while since I've done a "Things Seen on Today's Run" post. Mostly because I live in Florida and running outside is absolutely miserable 50% of the year (I only find it mildly tolerable the other 50% of the year), so I've been sticking with the treadmill when I actually manage to find the motivation to run lately. Things seen on the treadmill at Globo Gym aren't usually that exciting. Like Fox News. Or intimidating muscle heads grunting during deadlifts. Or 25 other people on treadmills running a lot faster than me.

I saw that the weather might just be cooperative enough to get a run in today, so I got my ass to bed early last night and was up at 5:30 to go out before it got too hot. First time I've been up and out in the dark since... I can't remember. My last outdoor run I think was in New Jersey in June, and sun's up much earlier there than here.

So here we go. Things seen:

1. Raining Lizards. I flicked on my porch light and stepped outside, only to have a gecko drop from the overhang right in front of my face. Nothing quite gets your heart rate up like being suicide bombed by a crawly. At least it wasn't a palmetto bug. Those have rained on me too :(
2. Santa. He lives here in St. Petersburg, Florida for 11 months out of the year.
3. A dolphin show. I've seen dolphins before on my run, but usually just fins. These guys were acting like they were at Sea World doing complete aerials. Flipper was having tons of fun. Or maybe there was something super scary in the water, I don't know. I hear there are lots of these things hanging around:

And the craziest thing I saw today was... other runners! Like, lots of other runners. At first I thought there must be some new running club, but then I saw that 99% of them were wearing bibs. So I managed to find myself in the middle of some kind of race, but it was really weird because I hadn't heard anything about any races in St. Pete this week. Plus, none of the roads were shut down like they usually are for road races. And most races that I know of don't start earlier than 6am (other than Disney, but that's because they need to get you out of the parks before they open) - yet these runners looked like they had been going at it for a while. 

And then I found one small sign advertising the "Florida Ultra Runners." A ha! This group is super top secret though, because I have found no mention of whatever event they were running today online anywhere. So I have no idea where they were going or where they had been or how far they still had to go! Leave a comment if you're part of the group or can clue me in to what was going on.