4 Encounters, 9 Miles, and a Bowl of Soup

[You can check out tonight's run here] While many of you were putting yourselves down for the night [possibly] I was finishing up a 9.15 mile run [tonight's pace was 9:38/mile]. The run didn't come easy [My wife and I had to do some pretty hard finagling to convince me to run...yes, my wife and I]. I decided to eat dinner before I went on my run - it's a habit I'm trying to train my stomach for. Over the years, I've thought it most prudent to do without eating before running. On longer runs, however, I know that I need more energy than normal [for example, I burned approximately 1400 calories on my run tonight] - otherwise I'll be dead an hour after the run is over. This too is a great way to experiment to try to discover what race day foods will set well for me before the Mercedes. You can put straight up cash down that I will not be eating italian sausage soup and a grilled cheese sandwich on race day [it's what I had tonight - it's what I tasted for about the first 45 minutes of my run as it came back up a few times]. So tonight, I was scared twice, approached twice, and passed twice by the same police car. Around mile one, a woman stepped out of the shadows on a very dark road. She almost made me crap my pants [and I'm not joking - call it a side effect of eating italian sausage soup and running...if you must]. I yelped and she nearly screamed. I said, "Sorry, you scared me." She said something inaudible as I continued down the road. On the North side of town, probably around mile three, I saw two african american gentlemen walking accross the street. Both had bottles in paper bags. One of them left his original path derelict as he walked up to me. When I passed him, I was probably less than a foot away from him. I looked, smiled, nodded by head and said "What's up." He did the same. I was not intimidated by this but find it strange that somewhere in his heart of hearts was the strange impetus that caused him to walk up to me. On Highland Ave beside the golf course I heard a crashing noise to my right. This scared me. Highland Ave [especially on this section] is not altogether well lit. Further down the road was a police car with her response lights on. The car was stopped and I tried not to look too much. 3 blocks from my house were a man and woman walking down the street. My path took me onto a left turn - they were on my right. I heard them say something to each other and then hear him say, "Hey boss." I run. A louder, "Hey Boss." I keep running [at this point I'm only about 2 1/2 blocks from home]. Finally, the man straight up yells at what seems to be the top of his lungs, "Hey Boss." My thought for the rest of my run was, "I didn't come out here to run at 9:00PM to chitty chat with people. I came out here becaue I know that if I don't now, I won't later." Now it's time to join my wife in what we affectionately call, "The Bed." I need sleep.