Taking Next Steps..

Crazy Craig is getting ready to run again.

To keep a Global Warming focus on my running, I need other runners to join me in Boston on April 14 for the National Day of Climate Action. This will be an incredible national effort and Bill McKibben has taken the lead in spearheading this effort through his Step It Up campaign.

This past weekend ended a couple of months of relative inactivity. Saturday, basking in typical, atypical January Global Warming weather, I ran my 7 mile home-based route, Wellbourne to Willisville and back. Temps in the mid-50s. I'd spent the morning working in our gardens, planting heirloom and wild roses with Jean, my wife, in our Backyard Wildlife Habitat.

Sunday, I drove too many miles--arghh-- back towards NWF and joined about 80 other Reston Runners and friends for a much colder, somewhat wet 10 mile run through this Virginia community. But at a cost in CO2 of about a 70 mile R/T. At least I'm thinking about whether or not a trip like this is really necessary.

Fact was I needed the group motivation to get out and run. And afterwards, I included the weekly grocery shopping trip to Whole Foods so the combined purposes for the mileage felt a little better. Whole Foods has begun to take some decent steps on the corporate level to try to address their carbon footprint.

Despite thirty degree temperatures, I overheated right away and so when I got back to our starting point, which was also our mid-point, I shed a top and bottom layer and kept on running. Was able to negotiate the course at about a 8:10 pace and headed home thinking I'm on my way. To where?

Boston. For the fourth year in a row, I've qualified for the Boston Marathon and will be joining over 20,000 other runners in making the run from Hopkinton to downtown Boston. Now to figure out how to get some of those other marathon qualifiers to join me on Saturday.

Crazy Craig