Another Commons Adventure

We actually had originally intended to join in on the 50k Fat Ass race that Trail Monster Running was putting together at Bradbury State Park this morning. For those of you who are metrically challenged, 50k is 31 miles. No, we did not intend to do all 31 miles, but were planning to do one 10.5 mile loop. And yes, there is actually a type of race specifically called "Fat Ass" races. They are basically grass-roots style, laid back "races" without an entry fee, no prizes and the entrants bring the goodies for the aid stations. From what I understand, most of these races are in the winter, when there aren't as many long distance races available. Anyway, with the snow we received yesterday, we went back and forth last night trying to decide if we should go or not. We finally decided to go. But then, in our sleep, we decided not to, as when Snowman came downstairs at 5:30 am (the race started at 7:00 am), he said, "What are we thinking? This is going to suck." So, we had a brief discussion in which we decided we didn't need this 10.5 mile run at this point in our training and that a real slog through the snow for 10 miles might not be the best thing for us... Upon that realization, we promptly went back to bed and I didn't get up until 9:00 am. Ahhh....

So, we decided to do a run in the Commons instead. We headed out about 1:30 with our YakTrax and were glad we had decided upon a run in the woods instead of on the roads. Boy was it windy! At least the woods protected us a bit from the gusts. We ran for 55 minutes, mostly on the packed down main trails, but adding in the one section we'd done last time we were in the Commons that hadn't seen any traffic. It made for some nice post-holing and tough going! That made us very happy with our decision to skip out on the Fat Ass this time around. We'll get that in another time.