Double Down Packet Pickup

So far the forecast for this week has been: Cold and wet; windy, cold, and wet; windy and monsoon. Today looked like it would be more of the same for my run. I got out of work around an average time and caught a ride home with a friend, saving me the trouble of taking two trains and two buses from the burbs back to Chicago.

This also allowed me to do race packet pickup for the Double Down Trail Run this weekend, put on by Muddy Monk. This will be my first trail run and I am very excited. The weather is supposed to be just as wet and miserable as the rest of the week. In fact, it is actually supposed to be colder and could potentially involve snow… I think this is an appropriate first trail run, however. It should be rugged and unforgiving (maybe at least the first time just so I can ‘earn my stripes’). These aren’t gravel trails of the urban athlete, but rather a suggested route through the rugged terrain that already existed. Ok, so this is going to be in the burbs, not some rugged jungle, but I can imagine. Calvin and Hobbes will be running right along with me as I dodge fallen trees, roots, and puddles the size of lakes, imagining these obstacles as something much more wild and untamed than suburban topography will likely provide.

Packet pickup complete. Well organized at Universal Sole on Lincoln Avenue. No line. Race shirts are cotton and orange, but it will be cold and it isn’t like they are going to stay clean anyway. Maybe the orange will be good around October. As soon as I got home, I stripped out of my business casual attire and donned leggings, track pants, under armor top, long sleeve Grand Valley State University t-shirt, heavy hoodie, and was out the door. Again, I turned out to be overdressed. Business casual might have been better. Strangely, it actually got warmer on the way home from the office! It was in the lowish forties when we left the office and was fifty-one degrees when my vibrams five fingers greeted the sidewalk for our daily mileage. Today I kept a faster pace, as this Saturdays trail run is sure to be a run that I will need to take very slowly to avoid dying via drowning, impalement, or blunt force trauma.

The fog had settled in around Lake Shore Trail around Monday and decided that, this week, as the waves crashed against the walls and jutted upward in a display that could rival Buckingham fountain, the Trail to North Avenue Beach should look more like the London out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. Turned out to be a great evening for a run after all. After my playlist ran out on the ‘cool down’ walk back to my apartment, I felt like Calvin wearing snow pants from the ‘Zip-Zop Zip-Zop’ from my unflattering baggy track pants. Maybe I should have picked up something a bit more fashionable while I was doing packet pickup at Universal Sole? Maybe it should just warm up so I can start wearing shorts again.