Saturday, December 29, 2007

Has it really been 10 Weeks?

It's so Good to back at the Desert Lake Club! Ottis My man! Ok, it wasn't the Desert Lake Club, but it was great to be back up at Croom, after a 2+ month hiatus.

I ran up in Croom today with the Beckster (this is her taking a break in a tree, slacker)

It was so good to be back in "our" park. That's what the newbee park volunteer called it when I thanked her for helping out the park. "And thank you for coming out to OUR park." Er, hey, I know I've been gone like 10 weeks, but "I've been running this place 40 times a year for 7 years and I've never seen you before, Hon, unless by OUR you mean YOUR you're ticking me off a mite (and geez, I was just saying thanks)"


Hey that's not the only cool tree in Croom, there is this one tree that Candi calls Chase's tree, (I thought he may have thrown up there once, but that's not the case, she just said it reminds her of him. Of course Candi and I have been running Croom together for 7 years, Chase was here maybe a year or two, and I don't have a tree, jeez...) Anyway, here's Chase's tree (and me trying to push it down, I'm standing on the other one to get a little leverage.)


That's not the only tree that has a name, there is also what the park service calls the Bench Tree, and we call John Holmes tree. Below I'm laying on the tree (if you look close you can see the we Heart U John Holmes spray painted on the tree.)

Another Cool little place is on E's Hill, named after... E, anyway, several years ago E made a peace sign up there and it gets wrecked from time to time and it's the Job of every Florida Ultrarunner to fix that peace sign when we happen upon it in disrepair. This was the case today and Becky and I did our best to fix it up. I'm afraid we didn't do great, but we'll coax E back up after her race tomorrow and she'll fix it right up!


Well there you have it a picture tour of Croom, we made it all the way around, we went through Bundy's Pit, Here's the Beckster chugging down the pit. You really can't tell from my amateur photography, but that pit is steep! You gotta be careful there.
Can I admit something here to the two of you reading?
It was great to be back up there, it was great to be running, and there is no other way that I'd rather get around that loop. Yep only running, and pain free running at that! Well, I may enjoy going the route the Sparky took, that looked kind of fun too!

5 comments:

superdave524 said...

Bundy's Pit isn't named after you?

Chase Squires said...

Gotta say, gang, I've run some incredible trails in the past year and a half out here ... I mean jaw-dropping.

But Croom is always my "home course." ... miss y'all.

My long run today was an "urban run," thanks to deep snow ... 3.5 hours in the city, running through parks, along roadways, across campus at DU, etc ... a fine enough run, with 7-11's to stop at for more gatoraid, but it's no Croom.

(BTW, I love that tree, it means you're almost to the halfway point for a break, you just gotta make sure Andy doesn't decide to pee near the cooler, he'll do that if you don't watch him)

Mr. Matt said...

After millions of dollars to charity and countless hours of volunteering am I Andy the philanthropist, no! But pee near the coolers one time and you're labeled for life!

Chase Squires said...

Gret reference! Classic joke :-)

Mr. Matt said...

Joke? I wanted to work the end of Philanthropist into the comment, but couldn't pull it off, (maybe if I spelled it philanthropissed)