With autumn upon us and the daytime temperatures getting a little bit cooler, I now have the advantage that I can wait until after all of the local schools are in session before I head out to run. That’s what I did today, leaving the house a little past 8:30, and the streets were mostly quiet. I had a pretty good run of about 7.7 miles. The only annoying thing about this run is that for some reason, I tripped 4(!) times. The first time was my own fault, as I was reading a work text on my watch and not looking where I was going. My left foot got tripped up, and I narrowly escaped falling down. The subsequent times were all with the right foot, and just small stumbles. Up until today, I had not had a tripping issue in several months. Over my past 2 or 3 runs, I’ve been noticing my feet (particularly the right foot) “scuffing” or “dragging” more often. It may be that I’m getting into a pattern of not lifting my feet high enough. My running cadence over the past several weeks has been really high (often 185+ steps/minute), so maybe it’s time to sacrifice a few steps per minute in the interest of getting my feet higher off the ground. This will be really important if I ever get more into trail running, as irregular trail surfaces would greatly exacerbate the tripping issue. I’ll monitor this over the next few runs, and see if I can get it corrected.