Florida Roots

May doesn’t feel like race season on Amelia Island. The humidity has been creeping up since mid-April, and last week I ran the Egans Creek Greenway at 7 AM in 80 percent humidity with the temperature already in the low 70s. By June it’ll be worse. By August you’re just surviving. But May is exactly when I start paying attention to the fall race calendar. If you want to line up in October or November in any kind of shape, summer training has to mean something — and it’s a lot easier to gut out a July long run at 6 AM when you know what you’re building toward. ...

Most of my runs here are solo. That’s part of why I live on Amelia Island. I can step out at 5:30 AM and not see another person for the first two miles. There’s a particular kind of quiet on the north end trails at dawn that I’ve never found anywhere else. But running alone for years on a small island also means you eventually run into the same people, literally, and something starts to form around that. ...