Two Weeks!

Just a little over two weeks. People are starting to taper. Whatever that is. 

Sunday morning - the staff run. The "Dress Rehearsal" for the marathon. We're pretty busy on race day, so two weeks before the marathon, members of the staff go out and run the course so we can earn our medals too. It's not nearly as exciting as race day, but we manage to have fun anyway. It's also where we make sure that there are no surprises. 

A few years back, when we had a short out-and-back on Indian Mounds road, we ran out to the turnaround on the Grand Rapids end of the road, only to find that GR had repaved that piece of the road. Our turnaround and the 21-mile mark had been paved over. Easy to fix, but what if we hadn't found out until the day of the race? 

Then, three years ago, when we changed the course to take advantage of the new trails in Millennium Park, we had a little surprise. We turn off Maynard and onto the trail around the recreation core of the park at the driveway of the brown house. As I instructed staff members at the Y before we started, at least three times I said, "Turn at the brown house." 

Which was all good. Everyone took off, all faster than me. Then, at about 10 miles in, I was running with Judi B. and we went to turn in at the brown house. ???? There's no brown house. Just a bunch of ruts and mud where the driveway was. They tore down the darn house in the week since I last saw it. We were using that driveway. 

We don't like surprises on race day. That's why we do the staff run. 

Sunday. We're running from the Y at 8 a.m. We'd love to have you join us for a few miles.