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…

Quite a few – Puja, Malabika, Indrani, Ashok, Samaresh and Sudipto braved the near freezing temperatures!!!

Hit the trail with the Deb family…

I was getting ready to post this morning’s run in my blog (and Facebook) when FB showed the events from this day (Dec 29) in the last few years. Incredibly enough – last year on this day, I ran the same route (as evidenced by FB’s timeline pictures) and I was wearing yellow that day too. I remember that Sharmila was in India (just like today) and I went to put in a run before the kids would wake up (again, just like today). The big difference is it was a cold, dreary winter morning last year in the mid 30s; whereas, today was a bright sunny morning in the mid 60s.

Something tells me Dudley is going to relate to this story 🙂

Last time I met Biplab was about seven or eight years back. His son was verg young then. They left for India and then this year have come back to California. Found out yesterday that they were visiting Atlanta for a few days. Couple of phone calls later, we scheduled our run this morning at one of his old beats – Cochran Shoals trail by theChattahoochee River.