St. Patrick's Day Fun

For Bethany's birthday (March 13th), I promised her lunch at Edna and Lucy's with a Bradbury run thrown in.  St. Patick's Day was the first that fit our schedules.  Then I was reminded about the run Jim organizes starting at 5:30 am at the Back Cove and ending up at Ri Ra's for a celebratory pint.  Knowing Bethany, that sounded like something she'd be interested in.  I let her pick.  I don't think she even needed a minute to think about it; we'd be leaving the house at 4:40 am.

I was surprised to find the car needed a lot of scraping in the morning; it was icy.  That and needing to be a bit careful on the back roads leading to the highway, left us just minutes to spare before the 5:30 start.  I was glad I'd picked a light fleece instead of a jacket; I could run with it over my short-sleeved, green running shirt.  Brrrr!  The group, maybe 20 runners, headed out at a relaxed pace.  A few smart runners had on headlamps.  Oh, yeah, of course it would be dark at that hour!  There were patches of ice strewn about the path, but were mainly avoidable.

It was fun to run along discovering who was in the group.  Along the Eastern Prom, we saw lots of TV crew from channel 8, there covering the people taking the ocean dip (who were also headed to Ri Ra's after).  There was a pretty long line to get in, but before too long, everyone had a pint of Guinness in hand and were yakking and laughing over the din.

Lots of people had to quickly quaff and run.  People have jobs.  Bethany and I were staying.  Erin said she had the day off and would have another pint, too.  Blaine didn't have the day off, but did have some time.  So we had fun exchanging stories of all sorts before we headed out on the 3 mile run back.  From there Blaine was off to work, Erin to extend her run, and Beth and I to find breakfast.  We ended up at Brian Boru : )

So, instead of the 4 miles on the training plan, I got in 6 very leisurely miles fueled by an interesting carb drink.