The shortest day of the year

Yesterday, as I walked home from the grocery store with my 9 year old son, the sun was setting. It was 3:30 in the afternoon! Just after 4:00 I took this photo from my back door. (It was actually darker than the photo suggests - I had a 2 second exposure.)

My running is picking up. I self-diagnosed "runners knee" (as I know it wasn't illiotibial band syndrome, a pain I know well), and backed off the running considerably. Last week I ran three miles in total, and took five consecutive days off of running. Perhaps the latter doesn't sound like much, but my habit is to never go two consecutive days without running.

I was trying to listen to my body. Every time I ran, my knee hurt. There's a simple solution to this, and eventually I acknowledged it.

But this week has been better:

Monday: 2 easy miles on the track, to test the knee. It was fine. Light upper-body weights after.
Tuesday: 5 easy miles with the running club. I cut off early as I didn't want to ramp up the miles too quickly.
Wednesday: nothing
Thursday: swim 1400 meters
Friday: 5 miles on the track, some slightly faster; light upper-body weights after
Saturday: 4 miles (3.1 of which were a parkrun race); knee fine
Sunday (today): planned 6-miler on trails

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Today is the shortest day of the year. How can I make it count?