Something strange happened yesterday on our run. We usually have horseflies following us and feeding off our sweating bodies. There were no horseflies, it was noticeably cooler, and the parking spots outside the gate were full.
It is getting lighter later which means as I pulled up and saw 20 pairs of legs I couldn’t believe my eyes. Are all these people here for F3? Well reality set in, justifiers were absent and there were a couple other groups out running at 5:45.
Off to a slow start, we loosened up. Our first timer Al Bundy rolled with us, making it look easy. As we tackled cemetery hill, the talking died down, but our pace kept up. Key West had memories of the trail run last week, so he didn’t follow us into the tree cover. His goal was to trace his steps and beat us back to the car.
The group ran strong and kept a good pace. Every week we seem to shave a couple minutes off the run. While we will not win any medals, this is becoming easier.
On a serious note, the future of the trail run is in question. We run for 25 minutes on the bridle trails. This means we don’t need daylight until 6:10. Add some clouds in there and we are not looking very good. We had adequate lighting at 5:58, we lose 7-9 minutes/week. Options are:
- cancel the trail run entirely in 2 weeks
- push the time out 15 minutes (this buys us 2-3 more weeks)
- shorten the route (3.7 miles from last year in reverse) and start at 6:15
The guys are leaning towards option #3 at the moment.
