Run 54: Houston, Part 2

This one is short.

Miles: 7

Other runners: a few

I ran much earlier on Sunday, assuming that when I stepped out of my hotel I would feel the fresh, cool air of morning and be energized and renewed. That didn’t really happen: it was muggy and still, and I trudged forward, slowly.

I know I’ve extolled the wonders of Sunday morning running elsewhere (save that one major defeat in Chicago a few weeks ago), and Houston graciously, with Texan charm and oil wealth, maintained the rule. I left the BBQ/car wash strip early, veering east into the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods with anticipation. I wanted more time below the live oaks, and to check out Hermann Park, which had promised a hill when I skirted around it the day prior. The live oaks were still there, beneficent in their silence and shade, and the park was lovely. What I did not expect were the birds. I had forgotten the sweet bird songs of summer: they were rained out in Seattle, and in Chicago they’re trumped by the city’s loudest morning melodies- car horns, trains, garbage trucks, buses. But in the dusky quiet of Houston at 6 am, the eerie hoots of owls and low calls of mourning doves echoed back and forth above me, bursting forth from within the knotty branches, drifting around my head like a secret song. I was the luckiest girl in the world, running in a hot dream.