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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

My Love Life in 5 Miles or Less

What better to do on a chilly, rainy Sunday morning than go for a long run on the southside with some really great people. Members of Chicago Ultrarunners descended upon the 40 Acre Woods section of the Palos Hills trails, ready to tackle the 8.1 mile yellow trail for a couple of loops together. This was my first group run with CUR and I just had the best time! I met Torey, Adrian and Brian at McNaughton, but everyone else was a new face to me. It was a little chilly out to begin, at 8 a.m., but the day turned out to be perfect running weather. Even the rain wasn't all that bad. The weather had some serious PMS; it couldn't make up it's mind! Pouring rain, warm sun, stiff breeze, light rain, sun shower, hot sun...and so it went.

Kelly was pointing out the virtues of either the Drymax socks or her Cascadias...we had the same socks and shoes on :)

Standing around waiting to get started...Greg, Badass Adrian B., Torey, Geoff and Sean
Brian, Kelly, Tony, Adrian, Sean and Gary...soooo, are we going to do some runnin' or what?
Start of the yellow trail from the parking lotI put my camera in my sports bra and it got a little 'misty'...Sarah, Dennis and Tony up ahead
This stream crossing was fun...nice and simple, knee-high water, not too cold...Torey and Brian hopped in before me. Bridges are for wussies ;)
Brian is super photog and got this shot of us in front, showing off :)
Then there was this nasty climb...it was ridiculously steep for the type of trail we were on, but served as a great water break :)
Gary and I hogged the front of the pack most of the time, and this is where the title of my post comes from. Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for "My love life in 5 miles or less", that was all Gary. He was able to sum up his current situation in under 5 miles...damn, I'd need about 10-15 miles for that, mostly because half of that time would be spent crashing with the ground because I was yapping too much :) We pushed it at 8:00 mpm for a couple of miles...I kept peeking at my Garmin to check and once we pulled back everyone was wondering why we were all so beat. Hehehe, I love doing that :)
Well at some point, on the second loop (which we were doing in reverse), we took a wrong turn. I was so busy talking my face off and concentrating on not falling that I'd have never realized this :) We stopped here and looked like a bunch of lost puppies; everyone consulting their Garmins. Then some bikers showed up...and took a picture of us! We figured out the mishap and got back on track (and by "we" I mean one of the guys...I had no flippin' clue where we were). Once we got back to where we wandered off, Sarah, Greg, Brian and I decided we'd head back to our cars and cut it at about 12.5 miles and the rest were going to do the full 16. I was already pushing it by going over my planned 10 miles, and I was happy with how the run had gone, so I was ready to call it a day. Here we are heading back up that biatch of a hill...
And a nice pic of the group when we got LOST, sans Kelly, Greg and Ian...
FR: Brian, Geoff, Torey, me; BR: Badass Adrian B., Gary, Jon, Sarah, Sean, Tony

A fabulous run that put my legs to a bit of a test (longest run I've done since my 50 miler earlier this month), GREAT company (huge thank you to Torey for starting Chicago Ultrarunners), hilarious conversation that gave me a cramp (thanks to Gary), and great photo ops (most of these pictures are from Brian, so thanks Brian!). The Drymax socks held up friggin' great...that included rain and two stream crossings...love these socks. And, my Atayne 4R's was naturally the star of my attire :)

Crash, out.

8 comments:

Michael said...

What we need is more Atayne shirts!

Paige said...

Hopefully we'll be getting group shirts from Atayne; now THAT would be glorious :)

Lee Ryan said...

That looks like an awesome run!!

Great Post!

Paige said...

It was, thanks Lee!

David Ray said...

Nice one! I won't repeat myself from Facebook, but the dog looks just as confused over here. :)

Danni said...

That sounds like FUN!!!

Dan said...

Hey, Who's the wuss avoiding the mud by running in the leaves? ;-)

Paige said...

I think he's a mud-hater...just sayin' ;)

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