It’s a Wednesday night group run with the Yellowstone Rim Runners. We have “designated routes” for these Wednesday runs but I get tired of the same old same old. It great for newbies to be able to be part of the group when the route may be unfamiliar but we tend not to run as a group but, rather, to break apart based on ability. I’ve complained about this for years but have given up on the issue. A “group run,” to me, means that we run as a group, that is, we stay together. Yes, we all have different abilities but we set those aside when we run as a group and set the pace to accommodate the slowest runner. This can be accomplished by the faster runners waiting every now and then for everyone to catch up or they can circle back to regroup. However, it seems that many/most want to use the “group run” as their “workout” and want to run at their own selected pace. Sigh…….
Although we have over 125 member of the running club, we rarely get more than 20 for our Wednesday night runs. During the winter it can dwindle to the single digits. There have been some winter runs where there are only 2-3 of us showing up due to the weather. Not being one of the faster runners, there were winter runs where I got left behind right from the start and end up running the 5 miles alone. I asked myself, why am I showing up to run by myself in the ice and the snow when it’s dark when I could easy run by myself earlier in the day without the risks brought on by darkness?
Anyway, back to tonight’s run. I’ve pretty much grabbed all the low hanging fruit when it comes to running new streets from where our group runs start. What I mean is that if we meet up at Pioneer Park, we’d now have to run 2 miles to get to a part of town I haven’t already run as part of the project. That really lowers the “efficiency” of the run as far as the project aspect. While participation of runners on our Saturday morning “group runs” has been reduced, many times, to just me being the only runner, which is why I quit showing up at the usual meeting place and just go somewhere else, for the Wednesday night runs I still show up at the designated meet up locations. Tonight I first thought I’d just run the usual route but then looked at my master map. I discovered that I had two single blocks that I’d missed on earlier runs and by hitting those tonight we’d still have a 4-5 mile route.
Here’s a detail from the map with the blocks in question marked in orange:
Brad and Shelley were up for the new route and off we went. I didn’t even think about taking photos so all I have is the GPS data to document the run. It was warm out and pretty uneventful although both Brad and Shelley found some loose change along the way.
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