Shoe lace fartlek morning

Today, I have kind of a funny story to tell. It all started a couple of weeks ago when Mike and I started doing a Friday morning 6 am run from the Dowd YMCA. The first week, it was just a small crew: Jay-mar, Derrick, Mike, and me. This morning, I thought we were going to need a city permit. There must have been 15 of us touring the Tryon, Park, Freedom Park, Selwyn, and Morehead roads.

That I can remember, we had Jay (down from NY), Jay-mar, Derrick, Caleb, David, Brad, Paul, Tim, Mike, and a couple of other guys. Oh, yeah, Dalena, how can I forget the only girl or should I say "woman" to be politically correct to join us on this 29 degree morning.

First we swung by Caitlin's house to pick up Megan N. We rang the door bell but no one answered. Someone suggested that we start singing Christmas carols. Perhaps this would get them up and out running. After all, there were about 15 of us. "Deck the Halls" and "Jingle Bells" might have sounded pretty good coming from this group.

From there we swung back along the blue line. This is where the "shoe lace" part comes into play. I was taking out a new pair of shoes for their initial run. The strings would not stay tied. Twice I had to stop and tie them and then, I had to sprint i.e. fartlek back up to the group. There was no waiting from them. And, I expected none. But those were not little accelerations. I mean, we finished the entire 10 miles in 73 and this included slowing and stopping for lights among other things.

Around 6 miles, we cut through Freedom Park. There we split the group. Most were doing just 8 miles so they turned left on East and headed back to the Y. Jay-mar, Jay, Mike, and I needed 10 miles so we turned right and headed long Princeton and then cut through by the elementary school to pick up Selwyn and back to Morehead.

Here our group actually grew in size. We are all running along talking about CRC when we hear someone yelling at us. It's Billy out for his mid week – mid long run. He had Meghan and Jordan in tow.

We resynced the group and headed for the Y. This was actually fortuitous for me as those early sprint took it out of my legs.

But on the bright side with all of the left and right turns, we hit the Y right on 10 miles so thumbs up to those leading.

Really appreciate all of the people making an effort to hit the roads so early in the morning and get their days started right.

 

Sharing one thought at time,

The Cool Down Runner