A hawk's breakfast, five miles and a dozen stinging leg muscles later ...

Call it an unsuspected omen, but something kept the cat out of his usual haunts. He sat rigidly on the bedroom window sill; my cat knowledge is cursory, but they only tense up with purpose.

I wiped the window clean of his condensed breath to find the attraction, and saw a squirrel circling the trunk of the closest tree.

Then my eyes caught the real attraction: A red-tail hawk with talons clenching a long branches that loomed even closer. It gingerly stripped away the skin from a rodent, pecking at the red pulpy meat without a care in the world (I'm purely guessing on this).

Until the squirrel got bolder than any rat with a furry tail every should. It stopped circling and made a swipe toward breakfast, but the hawk jumped, hovered for a second with its full wingspan on display and quashed any further interruptions. Finishing its meal, it loitered for a few moments in the taller branches, then split toward the thicker foliage by the Olentangy.

Whether a giant bird less than 10 feet away or thoughts of his succulent prey enticed the kitten, I'll never know. I was too worried about collapsing in the middle of my first five-mile run, the Turkey Trot, less than an hour away.

At 1.9 miles beyond my best running distance, I had doubts. And the course is a dream at this point; I remember little, beyond the smell of cow pastures with a quarter mile to finish. A dense crowd dispersed slowly; the first mile passed before I gained freedom of movement and no longer feared trampling anyone.

I just kept driving, never stopped though my head filled with thoughts of stripping off the hooded sweatshirt weighed down in sweat urged on by an usually bright, balmy November morning.

Time on the clock was 45:30, if you wondered. A little more endurance, and I could have pushed closer to the eight-minute-mile mark. But not this time. As with the first 5K, I just needed to know I could finish. Now I know, and races longer than the 5K's 3.1 miles no longer intimidate.

On my way out, I drove the same streets I ran, watching the long column formed by the slower runners then walkers of all speeds. They stretched out for more than two miles. It was a strange sensation to see them taking the same steps I took only 20 minutes before, to feel nearly at rest when they trudged the final mile uphill to the finish.

Behind the waning pack, a crew packed up the water station and after the last walker, only a police cruiser held back the phalanx of anxious holiday drivers confined in a single lane.