Interesting morning at Devil’s Turn this week. We had a nice sized crew for January run…18 strong. Starting to see some newer folks come out and be regulars which is nice. The Bee and I love having the new guys out there and we have some strong runners in this new group.
The Thang
Today we went old school on Piper Glen hills. A great course that is always tough. Seems like the crew is getting stronger as we used to just get through the 6 mile loop in time and now folks are running for extra credit before the bell rings. The hills in the Glen just keep on coming and by the end of the run they are quite brutal. We had a few new folks to the run so some suggested I chalk the route…HoneyBee lent me some chalk but I thought, “we don’t need this…no one will get lost”. Hmmm…..
Moleskin
The backblasts can sometimes be hard to write for Devils Turn. Mainly because we just run and the PAX breaks up into pace groups. We have the speedsters out front like HB, Brat, Haggis…no one but them knows what goes on up in the front. A few of us try to keep up behind them but are too tired to talk, and then you have some folks cruising further back probably talking about taxes or how bad Cam Newton played this year…but no one really knows.
Today’s run was no exception…same dudes out front killing it. Haggis ran an extra hill lap I believe and he flew past me so fast I barely heard him grunting and snortling. The rest of the crew was running strong and nothing happened until the end.
YHC had dutifully chalked out the directions throughout the run as the morning went along….I even added an arrow with “back to Rea” written on the pavement just in case someone missed the turn back onto Old Course. Well even with all the chalk and directions, we lost someone. First time that has happened to YHC. Poor Clubber didn’t make it back…
His buddy Drago was quite concerned that he had not returned by 0620. We all know how dangerous a place Piper Glen is….but when you are Clubber Lang nothing should scare you…I mean…come on…Clubber used to be the heavyweight champ of the world:
By the way…if he joins Slack that image has to be his avatar.
A few of us sprang into action. Haggis and I jumped in the Stone Mobile to go look for him…well I said let’s go run and find him and Haggis said I was crazy and that he’d drive…he turned out to be very correct with that decision. HoneyBee, Brat, and Wild Turkey all took off looking for him as well. Haggis and I thought we had found him at one time…but it turned out be a 70 year old guy out for a walk giving us the stare down as we slowly crept through the neighborhood. Haggis and I did a little real estate shopping and looking for houses for him since we couldn’t find Clubber anywhere. Eventually he was found…huddling, scared, shivering, and barely alive…Bratwurst and his soothing and calm demeanor brought him back to life…and back to the parking lot.
All in all a good day….but next time I’ll make the arrows even bigger.
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