Last Run Club of the Year

Since Run Club is on Thursdays, and the next two Thursdays are holiday eves, the last meeting of the year was last week. At the beginning of the week, there was a lot of interest in attending. People who hadn't gone before were chiming in about how they would be there, awesome, of course.

Then Thursday arrived. A gloomy day full of near-freezing drizzle. And Run Club is at 6:30pm, which means that it is dark out at this time of year. Heck, I considered not going, because I was worried about the sidewalk being icy.

But in the end, I went. I stepped carefully on the sidewalk where snow was seriously considering accumulating and made my way to the meeting place. There, I was not surprised to find that most of the people who had chimed in on Facebook were not going to show up.

But, there were five of us ready to brave the darkness, the cold, the rain/snow and the slick roads. All women, of course, all Run Club veterans by this point. I suggested that we stick to the streets instead of sidewalks and hit the Greenbelt towards the university, because they would likely have taken care of their walking areas.

And so we set out, into the darkness and the cold. And we ran for over 4 miles, the wind at our backs going out. On the way back, the wind whipped our cheeks into redness, or, in my case, more redness since I was already getting hot by the time we turned around.

When we got back I asked about taking a picture, but the other women didn't want to because of our disheveled states. I suppose that my idea of appropriate picture time is tempered by my backpacking experience, when being a messy, stinky, dirty wreck is an accomplishment, especially if there's a view behind you. But even without a picture, we could all leave knowing that we were total badasses. We braved the weather and the dark together and earned every drop of sweat left freezing on the street.

Until next year, Run Club!