Sunday 2/6/11

Woke up Sunday at 6:00am and headed to the downtown Coffee Emporium at 7:00am for a group long run. There was a solid group of 24 people and 2 dogs. I ran with Mike Fry and another guy that is training for the Toledo Marathon (whose name I can't remember). We headed towards the Ohio River and crossed the Purple People Bridge into Newport, KY. We then crossed the Licking River into Covington, KY which I have to say was pretty ghetto. We turned back north heading towards the River and found some pretty amazing neighborhoods! It is wild in the Cincy area how you can go from ghetto streets to millionaire's streets in 2 or 3 blocks. W came up on the River and crossed the Suspension Bridge back into Ohio. We hung a right and ran around the Reds stadium Great American Ballpark. Once back by the river we headed west along the river towards Paul Brown Stadium, the Bengals stadium, where I had to make a quick pit stop. We looped back around and crossed the C W Bailey Bridge back into Covington, KY again. This is where something awesome happened. We ended up taking a wrong turn and were running through the 'hood again and came past a house with a large lady who was lacking teeth and a scrawny guy with clothes that were way too big for him. Let's just say they weren't sober and probably hadn't been drinking. The crackhead lady yells at us "GET HEALTHY!!! KEEP RUNNING!!!" The three of us just started cracking up right there in front of her and I yelled back "YEAH BABY!!!" It was well worth the half mile detour. We headed back across the Licking River on a different bridge from the first time back into Newport, KY. There was a lady and her two kids carrying a couple boxes of donuts and some coffee down the sidewalk. I asked them if that was for us and they said "NO!" Man, the crackheads were nicer! We crossed back across the Purple People Bridge, turned right and ran past the P&G Pavillion to the end of Friendship Park and back through downtown to the Coffee Emporium. In all we covered 15 miles in 1:54:27 (7:37 pace). Later in the day we had a couple people over (Brian, Brooke, Rusty, and Rachael) for the Super Bowl. Good game...bummer the Steelers couldn't pull it out in the end.