[Today’s run: 6 miles]
We have not been going to the Saturday morning run in Starkville for about a month now. Instead, we have been hosting a small group of our own here in Columbus.
This morning there were 5 of us and our route was the new not-yet-in-use northbound side of the being-divided US 45. If you start out from our house you can go all the way south to where the barrier moves traffic over to the 2-lane configuration 8 miles from here. With a return trip that is 16 miles.
I don’t go that far. I put water stops out (1 – gal water, 1 – gal yellow Gatorade, bunch of paper cups in a 5-gal bucket) at 3 miles, 6 miles and sometimes 9 miles. And I usually just run to the first water stop and back. That’s what I did today.
It has been a challenge to come up with good routes every week. This is the second time we have run on the new highway. This morning it appeared to be completely finished, topped up, new asphalt. The crews have started putting guardrails on the bridge approaches, one of the last jobs before line painting. Soon they will have the lines painted and move the traffic over and we won’t be able to run this way any more.
Today’s run was muggy but we made an early start and there were scattered clouds which kept the heat of the sun off of us. I still did plenty of sweating. We had one person go all the way to the end and back. She was completely soaked when she arrived back at our house.