A Very Bradbury Weekend

Saturday, I was ready for 20 with Mindy...or so I thought.  It's amazing what humidity brings to the party.  At 7 am, hoping to beat the heat, Mindy, Nate Augustine, and I started out on the 40 loop.  I don't think we were too far in before Mindy confessed she wasn't feeling it.  Well, not too much longer and I was really feeling it - the humidity, that is.  Yikes.  The loop went along with our normal constant profound conversation (don't ask Nate about the profundity; I'm sure in the swamp air he wouldn't recognize that was what he was hearing), but we were all drenched at the end.

In the parking lot, we refueled.  Mindy expressed a little concern about a Breaker loop.  I assured her I was more than good with walking the climbs.  That was all it took.  Meanwhile, Joe Wrobleski came running into the lot.  He was trying out some gear for the 100 Mile Wilderness run.  A brief conversation before we all headed out; Joe on his route, Nate, Mindy, and me on ours.

I decided the first real climb was the ideal spot to empty my shoe; I'd had something in there for a while.  Mindy told Nate to go ahead and run his run.  From then on, no one else got to hear our profundities.  I think this side of the mountain may have had the worst of both the humidity and the deer flies.  Ugh!  Still we kept running and got to enjoy the fruits of our labor on the Switch Back.

Back in the parking lot, we got to commiserate with Ian and Blaine who came running in from their battle with the humidity and flies.  Ian was pretty impressive with the drippage from his hat!  Nate, Tammy, and, maybe, Joe showed up, too.  It would have been easy to stay and talk, but we still had running to do.  Mindy and I headed back across the street for our last loop on the 40.

The humidity was moving out.  The air was moving and feeling wonderful.  Mindy might not have felt it at the beginning or even during  a lot of the run, but she didn't show any evidence of that in the last lap.  In fact, I think she seemed pretty strong.  The funny part was the weird areas of swamp air.  All of a sudden, we'd run from wonderful air into the worst of the tropics.

Oh!  I almost forgot about the newt.  Probably less than two miles before we were done, I saw something orange that moved while I ran over.  I yelled to Mindy to watch her step.  Because of me, she practically landed on the poor guy.  Seriously, I think her Inov8 (which kinda went nicely with the amphibian's orange) was less than a millimeter from the little guy's nose.  We helped him off the trail and wished him well.

When we finished the run, we recovered a bit at a picnic table before heading for well-deserved refueling at E&L's.  Almost like they were just for us, E&L had rocking chairs.  Good job, us!

Today, Rick and I tackled the last loop of the Breaker.  The park was kind of over run with mountain bikers, but they were all staying on the east side.  The air was great.  I was still a bit drained from yesterday, but enjoyed our run.  I was happy to show Rick the work Ian, Mindy, and I had done on the Switch Back. Good recovery run.