NTTR Holiday Card Exchange
Posted on 17. Dec, 2006 by Brad in Training
Yesterday was the annual “Holiday Card Exchange” hosted by NTTR. This was the first club run I’d been to and looked forward to it since deciding I could make it. The run itself was a nine miles out-and-back along the Northshore trail I’ve trained on from time to time. It was, however, the rougher part of the course with more climbs, rocks, and places to trip and fall.
Similar to what we did before Rockledge, Deborah and I arrived at 5:30am to begin about two hours of warm up before the official run started. We opted for the more southern/eastern half of the trail since the other half would come later. The temperature at the start of the run was nice, if even a bit warm and muggy, but made for some nice training. We were pretty much all alone for the first two hours and only met a biker towards the very end of our run. We had our headlamps from MADD to Jackson, but it was light enough to do without them about a half mile back from Jackson.
We got back to our cars in a little over two hours which wasn’t bad considering a couple of pit stops. We found that our cars were the only ones in the parking lot and everyone else had headed to Little Pete’s. After parking and mingling with club members, it was our turn to draw and head on our way. We wanted to get an early start on everyone since we’d be running slow and near the back of the pack. Heading out, we stayed with Stan and Beverly for a short while but they pulled away quickly. We drew again with Letha at the water fountain and headed up to Far Gate to draw from Mark. By this time, most everyone had passed us except for one group, but we were content. Back to Letha and on to Twin Coves for our final card and some food.
My first three draws turned out to be 10s and it would leave me with a 4th place finish. Not bad for a Sunday morning and it was a nice treat to what turned out to be an excellent day for a trail run. If the service at Little Pete’s had been quicker, it would have been nice, but it allowed us to catch up and chat with other club members, so it was all good.
