Seemed like as good an excuse as any to go put in an 11 mile run. Today was a little faster. Took the same time as last week’s 10 mile run.

Perfect running weather in the hills. Took me about an hour and fifty minutes..

I can assert, with some level of shivering, that on a cold evening with completely wet dirt roads, each and every muddy puddle is concealed by the sleet accumulating in your glasses. I do harbor some doubts since I have a nagging suspicion that towards the end, I missed stepping into one 🙂 Aargh!! My carefully cultivated sartorial sense was unceremoniously compromised as I trudged back home in my blue running jacket and what to any eyes with unsleeted glasses would appear as dirty brown shoes.

To the untrained eyes, it might appear that more Bengalis showed up for coffee and chat session at Starbucks than for the run preceding that. One might even be tempted to conclude that we prefer the aforementioned coffee and chat session more than our run. And one would be well advised to given in to that temptation. For, we do love our food and parties more than our runs. On the other hand, in the Maslow’s hierarchy of a Bengali’s needs – there is another item that outranks food and parties – and that is sleep!!

Thankfully, this morning, twelve of the group defied that hierarchy and came out to run on a cold and windy morning. The defiance was in full display, when faced with closed gates at the trail due to flooding, the group simply went around the gate and commenced their running! A few missed the photo-op at the end since they were putting in longer runs.

Thanks for coming out – Samaresh, Sudipto, Manas, Malobika, Sharmila, Indrani, Puja, Ashok, Surojit, Arup and Ayan.

Coldest run of the season yet : 9 deg F (-9 deg C). In St. Louis. I was dressed up for the run adequately. However, the skin on the face took a solid beating. Should have packed a ski mask… But very enjoyable run out there in nature…

There were ten of us this morning on a particularly windy and cloudy morning. Some random stats:

Guys: 5

Girls: 5

Range of age: 55 !!!

Length of run (in K): 5

High “5” to Chalupa!

5 miles in 24 degrees. In spite of three layers, the wind was making it very cold…