This afternoon I called my brother to see if he wanted to run/hike through the 12+ inches of snow over at Kendall Lake in the Cuyahoga Valley. He said he was up for the challenge so I picked him up around 6:15 knowing that it wouldn't get dark tonight until around 7:30 with this weekend's time change in effect. On my way over to his dorm I noticed a house where some college students had made a snowman with a crown and a beer bottle. Keep in mind that these are the same individuals that have panties hanging from the tree in their front lawn...
As we arrived at Kendall Lake it was very nice to see that the sky was blue and the sun was shining. It made all the snow that we got yesterday seem pretty nice.
We figured that we'd be doing more walking tonight though than running since the snow was so deep. Once we got on the trail however we were pleasantly surprised to see that there was a nice smooth path due to all of the cross country skiers taking advantage of the weather. The ground felt very nice and soft to run on and we didn't have to worry about any rocks, roots or steps since everything was completely covered. This made the downhills extremely fun because you could just let your body weight fall forward and even if you fell it would be a soft landing.
We ran past Kendall Lake over to the Salt Run trail and then took that up to Kendall Hills where we saw lots of people sled riding. Of course since we were the only freaks wearing spandex tights, my brother and I agreed that we better look like athletes and run all the hills the whole way up even if we had to do them slow. It was great running uphill past everyone carrying their sled and then flying downhill while they watch in amazement. One kid however thought he'd be a comedian in front of his friends and tell us, "That looks like a lot of fun... NOT!" We proceeded to run past him to the top of the hill and then turn around just in time to watch him fall off his snowboard, flat on his face. My brother then mockingly said "That looks like a lot of fun". His friends heard us and started laughing at him.
Our run only ended up being 3 miles in total but we were able to run up 4 major hills and the amount of effort that it took made it feel a lot more like 6 miles. Once again my legs felt pretty awesome. Just need to work on my breathing some more. Tonight was a good step in that direction.
Here are a few more really nice photos that we took as the sun was setting...
Note to keep in mind for the future: The Kendall Lake parking lot does close at dark. Just after Jeff and I got back to the car a Cuyahoga Valley cop was pulling in to lock the gate. Luckily we didn't choose to do more miles in the dark tonight or else we might have got locked in.
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