I have just returned a run. And not just any run, but the first shirtless run I’ve had… well, since summer ended.

Mr. Sun has decided to grace us with a brief reappearance. Or, for the visual thinkers:

Running in nothing but shorts and shoes is so freeing, so primal. And even the mild air felt electric on my bare skin.

There will be a time when Mr. Sun returns to kicking my butt. Hopefully that won’t be until the summer. Just now, I’m content to enjoy a more favorable relationship.

Last Saturday held yet another race on the track for us. I had been apprehensive about the coming heat, for hot weather’s always been my foe. I sweat (a lot) and the humidity that hangs over PA during the summer, well, it weighs heavily on my racing times.

As it turns out, the heat that swept through on Saturday was completely atypical of this time of year in Pennsylvania. It was the dry kind of heat that I hear people have in, say, Arizona. But if humidity is usually so detrimental to my racing, then its opposite had to have been good, right?

Wrong. About ten steps into the race, I had pretty bad cottonmouth. After a few laps, the dryness filled my lungs. It was like each breath emptied me of a little more of my moisture. My muscles were having none of that, and ended up seizing up pretty bad for the last few laps.

You can see my displeasure here:

This was taken on the last lap of the race, with 11.5 already done. If you look at the picture up close, you can see me failing, for lack of body fluids, to weep openly.

Here’s another pic, but one a little less dramatic. I laughed hysterically when I first saw this one:

That old man could not be any more inert, or care any less about the racers flying past him. He’s like a monument to stillness, sitting in the sun as I fly past. My friend managed to capture this convergence of opposite forces entirely by accident.