I am really looking forward to Thursday morning’s physiatrist appointment for my back. I am hopeful that I will get some answers from this doctor. While I’m hopeful for good news, I’m bracing myself for bad news. Good news would mean that whatever the problem is, there is a quick and easy fix. Bad news would mean it’s complicated and I need surgery. I cannot forsee it being that bad, but one never knows.

Yesterday a friend from out of town visited with his family. zrun and I first met at the Philadelphia Marathon two years ago and have been penpals ever since.

We decided to meet up for lunch at which I invited a mutual online friend to join us. I’ve known Rob (aka loopy) for the past few years but this was the first time zrun and loopy were meeting in person. So cool to see those online connections become real.

This morning’s sunrise – hard to pass up the chance for an early
morning run when you are greeted with this.

This morning the three of us met up for a run on Rob’s regular trails up around Lehigh University. The plan was to run for about 70-80 minutes. I began to get an inkling yesterday afternoon that perhaps zrun wasn’t use to the hills we have around here when his wife kept making comments about our mountains. Living around here you have no choice but to learn to love the hills. Rob was great at keeping us slow on the rocky trails to avoid unwanted falls.

I should also mention that these trails exist on private property. I have no idea how many miles of trails are actually up there. You could run up there for hours and never hit the same trail twice, and many of the paths don’t even look like a trail to the untrained eye. Thank god we had Rob there.

Pretty early into the run we caught a glimpse of Bethlehem from the top of the ridge. Nice view.

I tried getting some shots of Rob and zrun ahead of me but everything always came out too blurry. Plus, the trail is pretty rocky so you have to look down constantly. I kept remembering the last time I was up here with Rob a couple of years ago and how much harder the run felt to me back then. This morning it was a lot easier, probably as a result of all of my runs at TNP.

We finished up our run right on schedule after running for about 80 minutes. It always feels so good to get in a decent workout to start the day off. Thanks zrun and Rob!