Bike Path 10

The morning proceeded the way most Saturdays do these days, with Sam asking incessantly when it was time for swim class, followed by big smiles in the pool during swim class, followed by sugary donuts at Frosty's with Anne and family. We rounded out the morning with a trip to the farmers market to buy some locally grown produce, get a pretzel for Sam, listen to some music, and pick up the soup at Frontier before heading home. Ryan made it back from the Brad around lunchtime, and noticing that a light snow had already started, I quickly got myself organized for my run.

I headed to the bikepath, thinking it would be the clearest and safest option. Not too many people out under the gray skies with flakes falling from above. I ran a ways out onto Old Bath Road at the far end of the bike path to get to 3 miles before I turned around, thinking it would be nicer to just have to do 4 for the second "lap."Around 5 miles into the run, I saw a friendly face headed toward me, it was Phil running with Quint, the dog. I said hello and turned around to join them. Phil warned me that it would be slow, but honestly, Quint was keeping a pretty fast pace for a big dog, and I was happy to have a distraction for a bit :-) At the end of the bike path, Phil stopped to walk for a bit and let Quint go to the bathroom. In looking at my Garmin, I realized it would probably be best to go out onto Old Bath Road for another 3/4 mile and then turn around; it would mean I'd just have 3 miles to go at the turn-around. I took my leave from Phil and Quint, and figured Phil might be happy to be able to run his own pace - I think I was making him nervous, even though I really didn't care what pace we ran! :-) Plus, it gave me something to shoot for. With an extra 1.5 miles to run, could I catch them before the parking lot? I saw them long before I actually caught them, finally, with 1/2 mile to go. They turned off at the dog park and I kept going to the car. My calculations were, as is typical, a bit off, so I ended up with 10.5 miles in 1:27.

Tomorrow's snowshoe race should be interesting on many levels - lots of snow, with more on its way tonight, a tough course, and half of the "O" trail to run! On snowshoes! Man, that race director is mean :-) And seriously, I try to keep my "O" trail usage to once a year... this is totally wrong... And if I could just get my back to stop hurting - man, that container of soup was heavy, and I tweaked something getting it out of the car and into the fridge. Sigh. Well, it's always something, isn't it?!