5-YEAR REUNION

“Double” is in town on business again this week. This time his hotel is about 5 miles from my office, so tonight we decided to meet right after work. I picked him up and we drove 5 minutes to Bryant Lake Park. I’ve never run there, but I’ve been meaning to check out. While it turned out to be a nice park, it wasn’t my favorite for running, mainly because 95% of the trails were paved. After about 15 minutes in the park we came to a road that leads to one of the paths that I run every morning. We decided just to hop on that and run 45 minutes out and then turn around.

My legs felt pretty good and the 90 minutes flew by. If they all flew by like that, I’d probably have more than 3 or 4 90-minute runs since Grandma’s. Weather was great, low 70s with a dew point around 50.

Double and I “met” about 4 years ago through the hillrunner.com forum. A few months later we met (along with some other guys from the forum) at a race in Madison, before meeting again at the 2002 Boston Marathon. Anyway, during tonight’s run, we were kicking around the idea of having a 5-year hillrunner reunion. Since most of “the gang” is from Wisconsin, Minnesota or Illinois, I thought this 80 mile relay would be perfect. The 2006 race will be in May, the Sunday before Memorial Day. That should give us enough time to work out the logistics.

After the run, I was home in time to help put my girls to bed. After that, I watch the best baseball game I’ve seen in a long time, Twins vs. White Sox, Santana vs. Garcia, 3-hitter vs. 1-hitter. Luckily for the Twins, the 1 hit was a home run in the 8th inning and they won 1-0. Great pitching, great defense (including 3 different outfielders crashing into the fence while making catches), great victory – for Twins fans.