Nothing to be worried about...

This morning started out with me worrisomely driving through the park and getting out to check trail conditions at several spots before meeting up with the group. On the way out of the park to head over to the meeting spot on Edinburg Road I noticed a runner coming down Old Trenton Road. As they approached I realized it was none other than Shoreturtle, who was actually running to the group run. You can check out the details of his foot trip here.

With the confidence that the trails weren't iced over and knowledge that Charlie was already kicking things up a notch I drove over to the meeting spot knowing that we were about to get our run on. I continue to be amazed, by the way, at the turnout we've been getting for these cold winter runs and simply cannot believe that we're consistently picking up new runners every week. Today we had a total of 9 runners joining us, 2 of which were first timers. Considering that last year at this time we were an army of 2, things have come a long way in a short time.

We quickly got our warm-ups out of the way, headed out onto the bike path and hopped onto the trails in front of the tennis complex. There was a little bit of patchy ice but for the most part we found the trails covered in enough powder to give us plenty of traction en route to the dam. We tried to change up the usual path in spots just to keep everyone on their toes and also to work in a few hills. After eventually making it out to the dam, we put in our hill sprint and headed back by way of the twirly bird. Before heading back into the trails just past the boat house we decided to hang a right and work another hill into the mix. Then we tucked back into the trails and backtracked our way just long enough to take advantage of one more decent hill. Finally, it was back out in front of the tennis complex to take the bike path all the way back to the parking lot.

Congrats to everyone who made it out this morning! Despite my early concerns about what the conditions would be like we actually ran slightly faster and longer than usual and even added in some additional hill work. Nice job everyone!

Roll call: Bill S., Bill Y., Butch, Cassie, Charlie, Diana, Mariana, Nate, Sabrina, and Terri