Fun & Busy Weekend

Saturday, some of the Trail Nerds and I went to WyCo park to do some trail maintenance. We're hosting a trail race there on Nov 11th, and we wanted to get the trails in shape for the event. It's always hard work, but we always have a good time, as well. Good Ben brought donuts, and I had orange juice and coffee available to all takers.

After our 4-hour trail maintenance session, we headed to SM Park to go to a meeting about the future of that park and the trails in the park. We had a decent showing of trailrunners at the meeting to let them know our trailrunning needs. I met some interesting folks and agreed to be on the Park Board's Planning Committee to represent the trailrunning community. With this assignment, I and my "trail-friendly bed-fellows" have a chance to positively affect the future of the entire park system, (and keep it from being completely paved-over and turned into a giant commercial parking lot). The park system has already put in a large amount of new paved pathways. It's my job to help keep the unpaved options open for us, the mountain bikers, hikers, adventure racers, and equestrian users. Cool, huh??? After the meeting, I had a gaggle of chores to do at home, and ended the day with time spent updating the trailrunning website.

Sunday, I had a busy day planned, also. I had scored some tickets to see our local NFL football stadium to celebrate my son's birthday. I had also decided (last-minute) to run a trail marathon that morning as a training run. The NFL game was a noon game, so I would have to run a decently fast (training) time so that we would have time to tailgate before the game.

The weather was perfect (if not unseasonably warm), and there were a lot of the Trail Nerds at the race; each of them were doing one of the 4 different distances offered. I took the early 6 a.m. marathon starting time, to give my son and I a fighting chance for more tailgating time. He slept in the car while I was running...he had worked until midnight, and gone to sleep after 2 a.m. My legs felt a little dead during the whole race, probably from just having run in a 50-miler two weeks ago. I just took it easy and ran with Lance and Steve and others during the race, and had a fun time socializing and cheering-on other runners. In the end, I scratched-out a 4-hr, 27-minute marathon-distance "training run." I had a cool looking shirt and one of Lou Joline's hand-crafted funky medals to show for my efforts, also.


The Shirt.
(Photo by Dick Ross)


Some Trail Nerds at the 7 a.m. Start.
(Photo by Dick Ross)

Being finished at 10:30 a.m. left my son and I with only about an hour of pre-race tailgating time, after we drove to the stadium and parked. We made up for it later, though, by tailgating after the game while waiting for the traffic to subside. The car behind us had the same game plan, and we had a decent time with these total-strangers-turned-parking-lot-buddies. Oh, by the way; it was a great game, and our team won decisively, despite a couple of "dubious calls" by the game officials. After we left the parking lot, we headed to a really good Cajun restaurant for spicy food. When we finally got home, all we wanted to do was sit and watch television with my grandson, daughter, and son's girlfriend. That was enough!