Morning Buddy Run

Wow! A total of 15 people showed up for our 6 am buddy run at Campbell Park! That's the largest group I've seen since joining TNT! From left to right they are: Debra (my winter season mentor), Victoria (my summer season mentor), Luisa, Brian, Rakhee, Steve, Julie, me, Coach Tim right behind me, Janine, Andria, Bruce, Arianna, and John. Tanja is always camera shy in the morning and took the photo. Yup, it was cold this morning and dark. The funny things you see on a couple of runners heads are headlamps to light our path.
Most of the group ran 4 miles today. Yup, 4 miles really early in the morning. It gets up heart pumping, our minds going, and prepares us for the day. It also wakes up all the kinks in our bodies and we hear some groans and moans and som teasing complaints along the way like these from Coach Tim, "My knee hurts, why does it hurt Steve? Why doesn't it hurt other times Steve?" I'll take a picture of Coach Tim next time so you'll understand what I mean.
Kinks. My kink is plantar fasciitis. It's not really a kink but a pain I'm feeling on my right foot stretching from the heel to the ball inside the arch. I've been massaging it, icing it, and rolling it over a frozen water/rubbing alcohol mixture and it has improved dramatically. My foot no longer screams at me when I wake up in the morning but has a dull pain when I first step on to it; it's improved. During this morning run it felt bad enough to slow me down. As soon as I reached the end, or near the end, I started walking until Coach Tim encouraged me to slap his hand at the end. As soon as I slapped it I sat down and pulled off my shoe rubbing my arch.
Coach Tim sat next to me and explained what plantar fasciitis is and things I can do to heal it like being brutal to my foot and rolling it over a golf ball. Yeah, sounds like fun. The main cause of my plantar fasciitis was wearing the wrong shoes. I've learned my lesson and bought proper shoes. I'll be using them on Saturday.
So, as we stood up Coach Tim, and the other runners, noticed that we left wet butt prints on the concrete. Needless to say his was huge and mine was small and cute. Sorry folks, I really didn't want to take a picture of that. I hope you don't mind.
See you on the trails.