Soft Parade

Hello men:

Glad to see/hear that most of you ran the Culinary Trails on Tuesday for practice.

It was a long, cold -- and very HARD -- winter. What I mean by HARD is RUNNING SURFACES. Not much choice in the winter: It's either our hard, junky indoor track, or the freezing cold, hard pavement outdoors.

Well now the snow has melted and the ground has thawed sufficiently so you can run the Culinary (and other) trails, as well as North Field if you don't mind the boring loops. You know Dave R. will be down there, probably shoeless, for hours on end.

As your coach, I strongly encourage you to run on soft surfaces (trails, grass) as much as you can now that you can. The trails are our friends! Become reacquainted with them. Often. It will keep you from getting banged up and injured. And besides, isn't it more fun to run off-road and get a little muddy?

Just be careful not to run along any cliffs (across the river) or do stupid stuff like a high-wire act on a log with a 30-foot drop to a stream below (for details, see Dumb and Dumber). Translation: Be careful and don't take stupid risks.

See you on the track very soon ...