Free Run. Forty Minutes. Downtown Boise and The North End.

Yesterday's run was a bit informal. The weather was outstanding, once again, as each morning a fresh crispness is renewed and brings back memories of nostalgic falls past. I sandwiched my run into a free space I had during a break from work, which allowed me to run through downtown, an area I don't typically run through. The capital building looked elegant backed by the bluest september sky, and  groups of living veterans from every war gathered as brother at the capitol steps for National POW/MIA recognition day. The rest of the city is peppered with impromptu chain link fences and orange cones.

 Boise is ever changing. It's facade is hardly recognizable as the city I first moved to eleven years ago. As the expansion rises, I comfortably do not feel displaced by the shifting momentum. This city feels like an old friend. Someone I once loved dearly, but time as placed it's temperate hand between us, and without realization we have changed. I am different. Boise is different. But, after our respective morphologies, we have greeted each other with a grin and silently agreed that what was once truth holds strong today.

If downtown is a lifelong friend, then the north end is like the lover who never tarried from your side. Unchanged and unadulterated, this mature neighborhood welcomes you with quite streets canopied with late summer foliage, trees as old as the houses themselves.  It's nice that somewhere so experienced can present itself as new on curious mornings when running is all there is to do.

My training is going very well.  Each day I feel stronger and more confident.  Seattle looms as an epic quest waiting for me to prove my worth.  I have more pains then my younger self was accustomed to.  My feet hurt in peculiar ways.   My hip tightens up like rubber bands before they snap.  But, my mental strength remains.  Each day awaits with new challenges, new miles to be bested.  And, if this weather holds and turns itself into the gracious Autumn, training ought to be a sinch.