Random notes

I've been away for awhile. Far away in my thoughts. We suffered a tremendous loss last month. My Mother in Law passed away. You hear many stories and jokes about Mother in laws, but my Mom in law is a very good lady and loved me like her son. I say IS because she'll always be with us. And she'll forever motivate me to keep running. Just as I hear my deceased Dad's voice say "keep it up son, don't ever stop." I will forever hear my mother in laws voice ask, "?Ya fuiste a correr?" "Have you been on your run yet?" My fondest memory of her will be the message she constantly tried to convey to us all, "Don't judge a person's actions. Every person is a world unto themselves. What we may see as important, others may not.
Ever hear, "It's not a trail race unless someone gets lost"? Well I've seen it several times. Once at an event where there was a trail race and a triathlon being held together on the same date and at the same venue, a trailrunner got lost and thought she was supposed to swim too and almost jumped in the water until someone noticed she had a runner number and not a tri-athlete number. About an hour and a half after all runners had finished the event, Mountain bikers found her lost and wandering the trails.
This past Sunday I ran the Salado creek 16.04K Trail run in my Brian Ricketts race shirt! Brian, Kelli, and I warmed up with a slow three miler before the 8 AM start. Amanda greeted us at the start. she ran the 16.04 race too and finished second female overall! Kelli, suffering from Flu like symptoms dropped down to the 10K and finished first in her age group.
The course is very nice. After a mile on the road to the trailhead it's almost all single track with dirt, rocks, roots, and up/down twisting turning trails with a climb at the turn around on this one loop course The course was well marked but you really had to keep an eye out for the turns. There are many trails that criss-cross in Salado creek. At one turn there was a young kid about 15 yrs. old standing there. I thought he was directing runners. He chose me to ask, "which way does red go?" We had just passed a turn for the 5k runners that was marked with red flags going back to the finish. "Go back" I said. "You missed the turn" As I kept running I looked at my number and it was red. Maybe he meant red numbers. I stopped, turned and yelled "HEY RED" "Yes?" he responded. "This way I yelled" I waited, and as he turned the corner towards me I noticed he had a black number! "No, go back to the last turn." He had a 5k number. I continued on. Poor kid, I hope he found his way.
I fed off the pace of two young girls in front of me. we were moving at a good clip until one of them started to fade and the other asked me to lead. I felt good and ran as strong as I could. In my Salado creek tradition, I finished third in my age group.
What a treat to see Amanda's husband, my good friend Lalo at the finish. He gave me a chest bump and a Bro hug! Great guy! We hung out at the post race pasta buffet listening to the "I Ching Gatos band" Their Garage band name is a play on Texas spanish slang.
This Saturday I'm registered to run the Prickly Pear 50K at MC Allister park. I have many memories of that park going back to the 70's, but I won't bore you.
The weather man calls for rain and cool temps beginning Thursday and continuing through Saturday. This place gets muddy. I just replenished my running shoe stock! Which ones am I willing to get dirty? But I will wear my Brian Ricketts Race shirt again!